


words fall through me

by thehobbem



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Finn and Poe also play, Fluff, Once AU, Pianist!Ben, Rey is a busker, Romance, ah: background finn/poe, and I think this qualifies as a song fic?, and a bit of angst I guess bc. well XD it's Ben., as in: the movie Once (2007), if this were a movie it'd def be a jukebox musical so, musician au, violinist!Rey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23204260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehobbem/pseuds/thehobbem
Summary: Ben's life is made of the exact same 4 movements: close the store at seven, take a walk, buy takeout, walk back home.That is, until a girl starts busking around the corner with her violin, and her music makes him remember things he'd rather forget — and things he didn't quite know, and maybe even himself.Rey has no idea where she's going or how she's going to get there. That is, until some tall asshole crosses her path, and his music makes her wonder if they're more similar than she would like to admit, and whether he could be the accompaniment she's been missing.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Phasma & Ben Solo, Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey & Rose Tico, Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 121
Kudos: 131
Collections: Reylo Hidden Gems





	1. falling slowly

She's at the same corner every evening.

Unfailing like the passage of time, and with a punctuality that reminds Ben of church, the girl and her violin are at the corner of Bowers and Elm Street every evening at 7 PM.

The clemency (or lack thereof) of the weather seems to have no impact on her presence: he's seen her play on unbearably hot summer nights and on winter evenings so cold he wondered how on earth her ungloved fingers still had any feeling to them.

Her own health also seems to be of no relevance; just last week she played through a series of coughing fits, making long pauses in between songs to blow her nose. Ben purses his lips in annoyance at the memory: not only did all the coughing and sniffing distract from her music, but she also should've gone home and taken care of herself, not busked on the streets till late. Jesus.

Every evening at 7 PM she’s there, certain and indefatigable like the morning follows the night. And so is he.

Fifteen years, and his evenings were composed of the same four movements: close the store at seven, take a walk, buy takeout, walk back home. That was it. No unplanned stops, no spur of the moment, no improv. Life in _andante._

Until a warm July evening, that is, when he was confronted with possibly the most beautifully executed “Por Una Cabeza” he’s ever heard, just five minutes from his house.

So now, every evening at around 7:45 PM, Ben leans against the tree across the street and watches the girl play two songs, while his takeout grows cold in the bag dangling from his arm.

He's not sure why he does it. If anyone asked — which, thank God, they never would — he'd say he likes her music choices. Not that that would be quite true. He doesn't really know many of the songs (most of them, probably, if he ever stops to count), and many others are pop songs of the garden variety, with the same goddamn four chords. She tries her best with those, tries to make them less obvious, but there's only so much anyone can do with things like that insufferable "Someone You Loved".

But quite often, she strikes pure gold. Her rendition of “Defying Gravity”? Or “Love Interruption”, from a couple of months ago? He'd pay a fortune to listen to those again. Sometimes, when there's an audience and she asks with that disconcerting smile of hers if there are any requests, he feels like crossing the street and asking her to play “Zombie” again.

He never does.

Maybe it's her technique that draws him in. He can't deny her technique holds endless fascination over him, because dear God, she has _none._

Well, fine. He’s exaggerating. But it’s just… her wrist. What the ever loving Christ is happening with that wrist, it’s more collapsed than the Roman Empire and the American health care system combined. What teacher gave her the idea that this was okay?! She’s going to have carpal tunnel long before she’s thirty! Just glancing at it makes his left eye twitch.

And yet.

Regardless of that particular aberration of nature, and regardless of how she keeps turning her feet out (it drives him _insane),_ there’s not one single note out of place. Rather, the notes seem to find a new place under her guidance, as she bends them to her will as effortlessly as she breathes. She strips each song of its overproduced, overpolished studio sound, breaks it down to its bare bones, and reshapes it into something deceivingly simple, but vastly superior.

In his experience, the average musician plays the notes as they present themselves, following the notations as if they were some sort of untouchable, sacred text. But not her. No, she knows which notes to unfold and which ones to let lie, and Ben can't think of many other musicians who have mastered that subtlety.

(The one musician that always comes to mind is the only one he won't let himself think of.)

And to think no one can even tell. They watch and think she just plays cool covers of pop songs. No one listening seems to realize what she can do, that there's more to what she does than a pretty face and unorthodox violin covers. The sheer deafness people are capable of, it's infuriating. 

When the last notes of “Rolling in the Deep” disappear, drowned by the clapping of her small audience, Ben straightens up. He’s had his two daily songs, so now it's time to go h—

“Boulevard of Broken Dreams”.

He stops dead in his tracks.

Just a couple of notes in pizzicato, but he recognizes them before they dissolve into actual chords. He’d recognize them anywhere, anytime. His seventeen-year-old self did not almost burn a hole on the third track of his _American Idiot_ album just so he could forget it. (God, it must've been unbearable to live with him at the time. Or any other time, really.)

This is far from the first cover of it he's heard; “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is a staple in the repertoire of any violinist who was a teenager in the 00's. But she makes it so much more… lonely. And vivid. Makes the notes unwind endlessly — like a road — right in front of his eyes and into the percussion of her stomp pedal, and the absolute _elasticity_ of every single note is perfect; the notes dangle on the verge of lasting for too long, before she calls them back and chains them to the next ones. 

Ben stays rooted at the spot, neither coming back to his usual place under the tree nor coming any closer. From here he can see only part of the girl through the small crowd gathered around her, but sees enough to know she's moving again; 'dancing' is probably the word he should be using. She always moves when she plays, like her body is too small to contain her and her music.

When was the last time he felt that way?

His eyes remain on her, but what he sees now is something else entirely. He sees a two-storied house with an ample garden where a Tibetan mastiff ran amok among the flower beds; on the second floor, a bedroom with walls completely covered in posters, where a boy who only wore black listened and relistened to that same song, taking turns between playing it on his violin and penciling down the notes on his sheet music. And he, too, moved when he played, because music was still a source of wonder and excitement.

All of which was too long ago, and best left forgotten.

When the song approaches its final notes, he lets out a long, drawn out breath almost in relief — and is shocked out of it when “Boulevard” seamlessly turns into, of all possible songs, “Eleanor Rigby”.

_“Listen to this, Ben. Best pop song ever written.”_

And Ben hears his voice as if he were by his side right now. He’s long lost count of how many times he heard those exact words, in the exact same cadence. Or of all the times he agreed but didn’t say it, letting the chance of some common ground between them slip through his fingers.

Ben crosses the street in a few easy strides before his brain can catch up, and stations himself at the back of the makeshift audience, peeking over everyone else's heads. From up close, the way she loses herself in the music is much more flagrant, the speed of her fingers that much more impressive (especially with that abominable wrist).

She plays the song half a key below the original, turning the song even more somber than it already was. It's a haunting thing to hear, and it washes over him like a tidal wave, cresting and breaking against knifelike memories of a Ben long gone, of too many years gone by and all the shards he buries. 

The absence of the original string octet, too, makes it sound… broken. Poignant. It leaves her single violin to tell the story on its own, with nothing but the loop playing from her effect pedal to keep it company. Ben fills the blanks in his head, hears the chords and the harmonies that aren't there, but which he knows like the back of his hands.

The clapping around him awakens him from his reverie. As a few people throw money into the violin case open at her feet, and others walk away, Ben gets a clearer view of the girl and the troubling smile she sends their way; from up close, that smile is much more capable of shattering someone's peace of mind than he realized at first. 

He's still caught up in the way her nose scrunches up with her smiles when she starts a new song, this time one he doesn't recognize. But he doesn't leave: it's too late now. The distance he tried to impose between him and her music lies in fragments on the ground, strewn in the wake of the memories she stirred. He has to stay. Where else would he go?

This new song is utterly unfamiliar, and he has no idea what the lyrics are; yet somehow, he can tell it belongs with “Boulevard” and “Eleanor Rigby”. Knows it in his bones, and in the way it sounds as lonely as the others. In the way it longs.

He wonders what a piano would do for it. If it would be less or more eerie with accompaniment. He can almost hear it, and his fingers discreetly play the notes he imagines against his leg.

The song rises and falls in perfect circles as the girl moves and loses herself once again, until the notes fall and fade away into silence, and the only sounds are from the occasional car driving by behind him. And still Ben watches in a trance — watches as the girl lets her arms fall, violin in one hand and bow in the other, and locks eyes with him. And gives him a smile. Him, and no one else.

Because, he realizes with a quick look-around, there _is_ no one else. He’s the last member of her audience.

He’s the last one standing there, staring at her even though she’s no longer playing any goddamn thing, and, he realizes with dawning horror, _she has freckles._ She has an adorable constellation of freckles that he was never able to see from afar, but now that he’s just three steps away from her, he can see them clear as day. He can almost count them. Would be glad to. Jesus fucking Christ.

“Hi,” she says.

* * *

This, Rey thinks as she begins ‘Lovely”, is not a bad turnout. She usually only gets this many people on Fridays. She glances at the money in her case — someone threw a five in there, which is an anomaly; the most she can count on from Monday through Thursday are one-dollar bills. That five alone is gonna buy her and Rose a couple of unexpected groceries.

Tonight is definitely atypical; not only does she have way more people watching, but the audience also stayed longer. Even Tall Guy Under the Tree came closer, which is a first. As a rule he watches what, two songs?, from the other side of the street and then leaves. He’s watched half of tonight’s set, though, just like most of her audience. Was it today’s song choices? She’s gotta write this down, try to crack this code and see if she can repeat today’s minor successes tomorrow.

The calculations and questions melt away when she moves into the pre-chorus, her attention shifting to the chords and the words hidden there.

 _I hope someday I’ll make it out of here_ _  
__Even if it takes all night or a hundred years_

This, right here; that’s the sweet spot. The melody rising with a minor fall, and the words that seem almost a straight-up copy of the journal she kept under her bed, back when an old stained journal she’d found in the trash was the only thing she could call hers. Back when she dreamed of leaving.

And leave she did.

_Heart made of glass, my mind of stone_

“What for” and “what did you find” are questions she prefers to ignore.

_Hello, welcome home_

She misses a piano, though. She’s watched a ton of piano & violin duets on YouTube of this song alone, and every time she does, she comes out with the same conclusion: this song needs a piano. If she had it as an accompaniment, it would make the song soar, give it some grounding.

Oh well. She has no one to play it with her, just like she doesn’t have everything else, and that’s that on that.

“Lovely” is a much slower ballad, though, and the mini-crowd she managed to gather slowly disperses, a few people throwing some money in her case. That’s the last one of the night anyway, so it sounds about right. Good thing they’re leaving before she stops playing, because the only reason all these people cannot hear her stomach’s grumbles is her violin; good God, does she hate the end of the month with a passion. That five will _really_ come in handy.

The lady from the taqueria gives her a smile, a wave, and a 1-dollar bill as she walks by; the two guys from the pizza place stop by for a couple of minutes, throw her a coin and leave. When the old couple leaves, the only one left watching is Tall Guy. He’s crossed the street, he’s watched most of the set… she hopes he’ll continue the streak of firsts tonight and leave a tip in her case as well.

When she lets the final echoes of the song naturally fade away, she finds him still watching her intensely; so much so that she gets the feeling he both paid attention to every single note, and that his mind was somewhere else entirely. He seems to snap out of it when their eyes meet, and— oh. Oh shit.

He’s hot.

That he is tall is a given, even from across the street it’s noticeable that he towers over other passersby; but that he’s so… _large_ is something she failed to fully register until now. That sweater barely seems to contain him, holy crap. (She pulls at the right cuff of her own sweater, hoping he won’t notice the hole there — but he must have already, the violin is what most people look at, and what’s right there if not her wrists??)

And that hair. It’s like a _mane._ And that one loose lock of hair falling over his eyes. The whole thing is like… like Simba’s mane when he grows up.

Great, now she’s a furry. So not where she saw tonight going.

She smiles. “Hi.”

Awkwardly, he gives her a tiny wave — which is precisely when her stomach decides to grumble again. Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

To hide her confusion, she starts hastily putting away her pedal and her amp, leaving the violin for last (and the case conspicuously open).

“I hope you liked tonight’s set,” she says, half in an effort to drown the next grumble and half to start a conversation. When he doesn’t answer, she throws him a glance and another smile. “Any contributions are more than welcome.”

That, more than anything else, seems to get him to move, and he gets his wallet out of his pocket with a quiet, “Right. Right, yes, of course.”

She pretends to be fully engrossed with her own equipment, and not at all desperately hoping he’ll leave another full dollar. A dollar and maybe some small talk. That would be a nice bonus.

When she raises her eyes again, she meets his just as he drops a bill in her case. But before she can look at it or thank him, he finally speaks.

"You need a teacher," he says, looking straight into her eyes. And with that, he turns on his heels and leaves.

Stupefied, Rey watches him as he crosses the street once again, and it's only when he disappears in the distance that she realizes her jaw is hanging open. She forces herself to close it, but her eyes remain glued to the corner of Bowers and Elm, as if it were a person she could exchange disbelieving glances with.

She scoffs, setting her hands on her hips.

"Well!"

Too stunned to add anything else to that, she shakes her head and finally looks at the violin case — and her mouth hangs open once again.

He left a twenty. 

_A whole ass twenty._

She grabs it in a hurry and examines it against the light, like she sees cashiers do. Yup. Looks real enough to her untrained eyes that have no idea how to look for signs of a fake dollar bill. Looks “groceries for the week” real. Busking only gets her full twenty dollars after two, sometimes three days, but here it is. Tall Guy left her a twenty.

That's— wow. That's beyond generous. She should be grateful. No, she _is_ grateful. 

_"You need a teacher."_

But what a fucking asshole.

♪♫♬

Nose buried in a book, Rose glances up from the couch when Rey walks in.

“Hey! How was—” She does a double take at the sight of Rey carrying a backpack, equipment, and a couple of paper bags in her arms. “You bought groceries?!”

“Yeah, and a little help would be appreciated,” she huffs, failing to fit through their slim door with all of her load.

Rose stands up in a hurry and takes the paper bags out of her hands, and her eyes widen when she scans their content.

“Why did you— girl, it’s the 27th,” she says, sounding absolutely dumbfounded. “Did you rob a supermarket?!”

“Close,” Rey replies, dumping her bag on the floor, and carefully depositing her case next to the couch. “I robbed a guy.”

“You— what?!”

Not answering immediately, Rey rummages through one of the bags still in Rose’s hands, until she finds the pack of Oreos; it’s only after she’s eaten half of an Oreo and stuffed the other half in Rose’s mouth that she continues.

“Yup. Or more specifically, my horrible, _horrible_ music apparently robbed him of any common decency.”

“Right,” Rose mumbles, mouth still full with the cookie, and she rolls her eyes. “I’ll be in the kitchen making mac and cheese in case you decide to make sense again.”

Following her, Rey recites the story from the moment Tall Guy crossed the street. Rose listens, busying herself opening one of the boxes of Kraft mac and cheese Rey got (2 for $1), and some shredded cheddar to spruce it up; she freezes halfway into cutting up a hot dog when the tale ends with the discovery of the twenty. She blinks at her.

“He left you twenty dollars?”

“Yeah.”

“He left you _twenty dollars?”_

“Yeah!”

“And you didn’t think to lead with that when I asked you why you bought groceries?” Rose asks, incredulous. “Do you have any idea of how much you suck at story-telling?”

Rey steals a piece of hot dog Rose has just sliced and eats it (which gets her a “hey!”).

“If I did, you wouldn’t be so shocked at the plot twist at the end,” she says with a wink. “Anyway, that’s it. My music is such rubbish that he decided to watch until the end of the set to tell me that.”

“And gave you twenty dollars because your music is so awful?” Rose asks, arching her eyebrows.

Rey shrugs, but doesn’t answer beyond that. Who knows the logic by which pretentious tall guys operate? Not her, that’s for sure.

“And didn’t you say he’s one of the regulars?”

“Kind of? He never crosses the street to watch from up close, like normal people, so I don’t know.”

Rose wrinkles her nose in sympathy. “I’m sorry you had to hear that. It sucks. _He_ sucks. Paying for our groceries or not, this is not something you say to people. But,” she points the wooden spoon at Rey’s nose, “you _have_ to know how great you are. Don’t let some random dude convince you otherwise, you hear me? We don’t do that in my house! You’re awesome, your music is awesome, and no, I won’t be taking any questions.” With a final, threatening look that makes her look anything but threatening, Rose goes back to the mac and cheese.

“I wouldn’t say ‘awesome’...” Rey protests weakly.

Filling cup after cup of water for the macaroni, Rose doesn’t even turn around. “Don’t worry, I can say it for both of us.”

“Well, I do practice a lot.”

“Damn right you do!”

“Yeah. Yeah! I am good, right? Like. I’m _good.”_

“You are!”

“And Pretentious Tall Guy can bite my ass,” Rey practically growls.

“Ohhhh, we’re adding ‘pretentious’, I like that!”

“Of course we are, that’s his full name.” Taking another Oreo from the pack, Rey adds, “Okay, I’m gonna text all of this to Finn and prepare my next set.”

She moves into the living room with her cell phone in hand, and soon she’s both texting Finn about Pretentious Tall Guy like rapid fire and scouring YouTube.

God bless YouTube. The last time Rey had any real violin class she was in Year 9, using Mrs. Kanata’s old violin. Maz did what she could for her, but an underpaid music teacher at a severely underfunded school with a fast decaying music program could only do so much. After that, Rey had to make do, and if it weren’t for YouTube tutorials and covers, and sheet music she found on the internet, her career as a musician would’ve long ended.

Well. Career. If she can call it that. At least Finn and Poe get hired to play at bars and pubs, she basically imposes her music on people on the street and hopes for the best.

Whenever her thoughts veer this way, she hears an indignant Finn.

_“Peanut, c’mon! Tracy Chapman started her career busking too! And B. B. King! And Ed Sheeran!”_

As well as Poe’s boomer-ish addition: _“And Janis Joplin.”_

What she didn’t say at the time, but never fails to come to her mind, is that all of them played the guitar, an instrument much more palatable to general audiences than the freaking violin. And they sang. Very important part. Rey’s singing skills are on par with a dying seal’s.

She scrolls down channels she’s subscribed to, eyes skimming playlist after playlist. “Hallelujah” no, she’s done it a few times… “Shape of You” God, no… “Crazy in Love” maybe… can’t go wrong with Beyoncé… “He’s a Pirate” right, like half the world hasn’t been doing it for years. And then the other half of the world wakes up and does it all over again.

No guitar, and no singing. All she can do is play the violin. And what real money can she make with that? What record label is looking for violin players? The only way to make a living out of it that she can think of is being in an orchestra, and she doesn’t want that. And orchestras most likely don’t want her, with her lack of classical training, bad habits, and a resumé that only includes working at service stations, convenience stores and repair shops. Not to mention callused hands from fixing engines day in and day out. Yeah, she’s such a catch.

“Bittersweet Symphony”. Hmm. Old as balls, but who doesn’t love the violins in “Bitter Sweet Symphony”? (Well. The Rolling Stones, apparently.) And she already knows how to play it, so that's a plus; she should probably update her cover, though, see what she can do with it.

She gets the violin out of the case, and starts tuning it on auto-pilot, almost absent-mindedly. If she’s really gonna add it to tomorrow’s set, she'll need to set her pedal on loop for the— 

_Snap_

Fuck.

Closing her eyes for a moment, Rey takes a deep, annoyed breath: one of the strings broke.

She takes a look at the E string, now hanging sadly from the neck; at least it was just the one. All she has to do is grab the spare and—

Shit.

That was the spare.

♪♫♬

Rey stares at the elegant red letters against a black backdrop. _First Order._

She rereads Finn’s texts.

> **Finn at 12:34**
> 
> It’s a nation-wide chain, so they tend to be cheaper. The guitar strings there were much more affordable for me
> 
> And if they don’t have the ones you want, they can get them for you from one of their stores in a couple of days
> 
> But they’ll probably have them, bc they always have everything

She's never set foot in here, it looks pompous as hell. The store on Highland Ave. is much smaller and much less intimidating, so that's where she always goes. But if the prices here really are better… she'll never say no to spending less.

The inside of the store is just as self-important as it looked from the outside, with dark wood floor, walls and counter; at the far end there's one single red wall with an impressive collection of electric guitars. On the right there’s a room proudly showing off several shiny drum sets that look absurdly expensive (God, Poe would go crazy here). She gets a glimpse of a grand piano in a room on her left, and she hears one of her old favorites playing through the loudspeakers on the ceiling.

 _When the night has come, and the land is dark_ _  
__And the moon is the only light we’ll see_

The store is pretentious, but at least they got excellent musical taste.

What really catches her eye, though, is the wall immediately to the right of the entrance: it displays so, so many violins. Beautiful, exquisite violins she could only ever dream of having, let alone playing. Look at that, that’s a Louis Carpini Primo G2! She’s only seen those in pictures! They’re gorgeous — and so pricey that merely looking at it already makes her pockets feel lighter; the kind of thing she’ll never be able to afford, not in a million years.

...But she could at least touch it. That doesn't cost a single cent (she assumes).

She gingerly touches the Louis Carpini, and shit, look at those ebony fittings, at how _smooth_ they feel against— 

“The varnish peels with time.”

With a yelp, Rey withdraws her hand immediately and turns around: the counter is right behind her, and it’s only now she realizes there’s someone on the other side of it.

Her eyes fly wide: not just someone.

Of course, _of course_ Pretentious Tall Guy works at the Pretentious Music Store. She should’ve known. Pretentious birds of a feather flock together.

He's leaning on the balcony with both arms and staring at her with intense concentration, like he's watching her every move. Which makes sense. He already thinks poorly of her skills, so he probably doesn't want her anywhere near the ultra-expensive violins. She steps away from the wall, not willing to test the “you break it, you pay it” policy they most likely have in place.

"The D Z Strad is much better," he adds suddenly, and she blinks at him. 

"What?"

_If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall_

Tall Guy fiddles with something under the counter, and the volume of the song goes down to vague background noise.

“That Maestro Stradi over there. D Z Strad Model 509. Great playability, really warm tones,” and he points a long finger at a spot slightly above her head on the wall.

She turns to look. “Where— _oh my God,”_ she whispers. There is the most perfect Maestro Stradi, staring at her from the height of its hand-built, oil-varnished elegance. Right within her reach, too.

“Do you wanna see it?” Tall Guy asks, as if he could read her mind.

Rey's tempted. Seriously tempted. Imagine holding one of these, _playing_ one of these. But she reins it in; it'll only make her wish she could afford one all the more desperately, and leave a bitter taste in her mouth when she goes back to the old Mendini waiting for her at home.

“Ahh… no, thank you. I, um, I need some strings, actually,” she says, slowly approaching the counter. There’s a nagging thought pricking at the corners of her mind: that Pretentious Tall Guy is as hot as she remembers, with a rich, deep bass voice that really, really suits him. She pushes it aside while pulling at the sleeve of her sweater again.

“Sure. A full set?” he asks.

A full set. In theory, she only needs the E string for now, but she has absolutely no other spares. Should any other string break, she would once again miss another day of busking, not to mention half of her lunch hour just to come here.

She swallows a sigh. “How much is the Pirastro Gold set?”

“Sixty-five.”

 _Sixty-five dollars._ Goddammit. It’s still cheaper than at the other store or on Amazon, Finn was right — but it’s still so, so much money. Money it hurts to part with. 

“But you know,” Tall Guy adds, and he clears his throat. “Those are more for experts and professionals.”

Rey frowns. “Yes, and I’m a professional.”

That’s when, to her full exasperation, he chuckles humorlessly.

“‘A professional’,” he echoes, almost scoffing. “Yeah, let’s not get carried away.”

She finds herself gaping at him. Did he just…?! Was he—?!

What an incredible, unbelievable, disproportionate _asshole._

She takes a deep breath and smiles. “You know what? I changed my mind, I don’t want any strings. Fuck you, and have a nice day.”

And with that she turns around and marches out. She can still hear the last verses of the song playing inside as she lets the door softly close behind her.

_Darling, darling, stand by me, oh stand by me_

But no amount of good taste in music can make her go back to this store as long as this asshole is around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is me, super late to the party with half a tall mocha, basically XD  
> I waited for more reylo with bated breath since TLJ, and TROS delivered... well, that. Suffice to say it broke my heart in a way no other fandom has ever done to me before — but I guess it at least made me so angry and heartbroken I just _had_ to write. I'm nothing if not moved by spite. Aren't we all, at this point?
> 
> There's [a playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1RqwR4RUvHeQTaysBcN6S7?si=yYl_w1ihQayB6FdNzRwNbQ) with all the songs used in the chapter, and it'll be updated with more songs with each new chapter.  
> Also, my inspirations for Rey's covers this chapter were [Lindsey Stirling's amazing version of Boulevard of Broken Dreams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdkWFPrrZVQ), [this very cool version of Eleanor Rigby](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U29aGB1x4VE), and [this beautiful cover of Lovely](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KFsJvgPfHg).
> 
> By the way: I like "Someone You Loved" XD I just think _Ben_ doesn't like it. So this is my disclaimer: the musical opinons expressed by the characters do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this writer! (Sometimes they do, though.)
> 
> Thank you to my amazing, incredibly supportive betas [Rae](https://twitter.com/regardingluv) and [Luc](https://twitter.com/maydaymaydei). Love you guys ♥
> 
> You can find me on [Tumblr](http://thehobbem.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thehobbem), where I do nothing but scream about reylo, Star Wars, Adam Driver, and talk shit about jj and ct. You can also read my [Pride & Prejudice/AITA AU text fic on Twitter](https://twitter.com/thehobbem/status/1228487438542286849). ^^


	2. eyes that know me

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**Mozart: Violin Concerto No.1 In B Flat, K.207 - Cadenzas: Luke Skywalker - 1. Allegro moderato** **  
**1 year ago **ᐧ** 77K views

 **Zigeunerweisen, Op.20** **  
**2 years ago **ᐧ** 24K views 

**24 Caprices for Solo Violin, Op.1, MS 25: No. 24 In A Minor. Tema con variazioni** **  
**2 years ago **ᐧ** 86K views 

**Tara’s Theme (From “Gone with the Wind” 1939)** **  
**4 years ago **ᐧ** 36K views 

The list goes on, but after brief consideration, Rey taps on “Tara’s Theme”. She’s never seen _Gone with the Wind_ (nor has she ever been anywhere near tempted to), but “Tara’s Theme” is one of those movie themes you can’t escape, and that you learn to recognize long before you even know which film they’re from. It’s not a favorite of hers, as far as movie themes go; it’s too grandiose, and rich to the point of being cloying, but that’s exactly why she adores Skywalker’s violin version. He took something monumental in scale and reduced it to something that actually tugs at one’s heartstrings, instead of hitting you over the head with how overly sentimental it is.

But then, there’s not much that Luke Skywalker cannot do, or a piece he cannot elevate. She still can’t believe that by the time she finally managed to move to the US, Skywalker had already stopped performing. It’s just her luck.

Just like everything she dreamed of when she moved here, really. Year after year goes by and she has nothing to show for it, except a heap of gaping nothings where her plans and expectations once were.

When the video is over, Rey locks her phone and places it on the shelf near her bed before she turns on her side. This is the first time in months she’s going to bed this early — it’s not even 11 PM, what is she, 80? But no strings mean no busking, which meant two quiet nights at home in a row.

She went back to the store the next day at a different time, but the strategy didn’t work: Tall Guy was still there at the very end of the afternoon, just as he had been at 1 PM. There was also a Tall Lady (and was Rey seeing things, or did that woman manage to be _taller_ than Tall Guy?!), and Rey almost went in, hoping to talk to her; but before she could, Tall Lady disappeared into the drum sets room with a client, leaving Tall Guy to man the counter on his own. Rey immediately turned on her heels and left.

So now here she is, going to bed early like an elderly lady, instead of having played and come back home with another fifteen, twenty bucks. Maybe even up to thirty, because Friday nights were the most lucrative day of the week. A night like that, wasted. And she fully, fully blames Pretentious Tall Guy.

Not to worry, though. Tomorrow is a new day, and she has another plan. Her problem has never been a lack of plans, just a lack of someone to share them with — someone to smile at her absurd dreams and encourage her hopes.

Someone to stand by her side.

♪♫♬

> **Me at 2:13 PM**
> 
> Are you SURE???
> 
> **Poe at 2:13 PM**
> 
> I’m telling you, there is no guy
> 
> There’s only a woman inside
> 
> (And holy CRAP is she one tall woman)
> 
> **Me at 2:15 PM**
> 
> Okay, so this has to be it right???
> 
> This is when he has lunch!
> 
> **Poe at 2:16 PM**
> 
> Seems like it? I’ll let you know
> 
> **Poe at 3:02 PM**
> 
> Yup, there’s a dark haired guy back now
> 
> Is this a tall people store wtf
> 
> **Me at 3:05 PM**
> 
> THAT’S him
> 
> Thank yoooooou!!! You’re the best ♥♥♥
> 
> **Poe at 3:06 PM**
> 
> Tell me smthg I don’t know ;)

♪♫♬

On Sunday, Rey finds herself across the street from First Order, staring so hard one might think she’s trying to bore a hole in it with her eyes. She takes a deep breath, crosses the street, and presses her nose against the glass door: no Tall Guy to be found. And it’s not like he’s easy to miss.

She looks at her phone: 2:14. This is it. She pushes the door open.

No Tall Guy, but also… no one else. The store is being manned by absolutely nobody, and the only ones in that space are Rey, the myriad of instruments on display, and the piano music coming through the speakers.

She takes a look around: the room with the drum sets is also empty. Are they all having lunch right now? No, that makes no sense, surely whoever’s manning the store will show up in a few minutes. Maybe it’s a bathroom break.

Distantly, someone coughs.

Rey turns: the sound came from the room on the far left, which, she realizes belatedly, is where the music is coming from. It’s not being played through the speakers, there’s someone playing and singing it right now.

 _…to need you too much_ _  
__Someone to know you too well_

She moves towards the room as silently as she can. _“Not to break their concentration,”_ she tells herself, like she isn’t moved solely by curiosity.

Someone else speaks, then a third person and a couple of others, before whoever’s singing resumes. But when she gets to the door, her eyes widen: there’s only one person in there. And by now, with her luck, she’s not surprised to see who.

The room is populated with all sorts of pianos, big and small, upright and electronic, and the one gorgeous grand piano she glimpsed the other day; it’s an exquisite thing of dark mahogany that gleams under the light, and is currently being played by Tall Guy. With his profile to her, he could easily notice there’s someone at the door if he weren’t so completely focused on playing. As it is, Rey gets to watch undisturbed.

 _Someone you have to let in_ _  
__Someone whose feelings you spare_

She vaguely recognizes the song, something from some old musical. But he obviously knows it like the palm of his hands: he’s playing with no sheet music or lyrics in front of him. And he seems… loose. Comfortable. His spine is an easy true line, and there doesn’t seem to be an ounce of tension on his (very broad) shoulders — or on his face, she realizes as her eyes trace his profile, the straight line of his nose, and his surprisingly soft jawline. How did she not notice before how handsome he is? Being hot is one thing, it’s in the shoulders, the body language, but the long lines of his face make for a striking profile she can’t tear her eyes away from.

Her scrutiny comes to a screeching halt when, in the middle of the song, Tall Guy speaks.

 _Robert, how do you know so much about it when you’ve never been there?_ _  
__It’s much better living it than looking at it, Robert_ _  
__Add’em up, Bobby. Add’em up._

Oh. Oh no. Holy shit. Rey bites his lips. She absolutely cannot laugh, but he’s… saying the spoken lines of the characters in the play. And he has a different voice for each one! Oh God, he’s a _musical nerd._

Nerd or not, as much as she hates to admit it, he's… very good. Irritatingly so. She may not play the piano herself, but she knows more than enough to be able to tell when someone is trained, and the guy in front of her is textbook: the perfectly aligned back, the angle of his elbows, the wrists that never dip and never arch. But it’s the way he hits the notes that is truly exceptional: he knows when to emphasize them and when to make them soft. When to make them interesting. He understands the intention behind each one, and his fingers move smoothly and surely across the keys, with the reverence and intimacy one would reserve to a lover.

 _Somebody hold me too close_ _  
__Somebody hurt me too deep_

And yet, his singing just might be the best part. He’s never off-key, but his voice is so clearly untrained, so completely average — and so unironically earnest. He sings with the same intensity he plays the piano, like he’s equally good at both, when he’s so, so not. It’s… the whole thing is endearing.

His voice drops to a near-whisper of a prayer in one verse, only to slowly rise again in the next, and Rey listens half hypnotized. There's such sheer abandon in how he plays, in how he sings, that it crosses a line she well recognizes. She knows what he's doing because she does the same every night between 7 and 8 PM.

He's not just playing. He’s pouring. 

_Somebody crowd me with love_ _  
__Somebody force me to care_ _  
__Somebody make me come through_ _  
__I’ll always be there, as frightened as you_ _  
__To help us survive being alive_ _  
__Being alive, being alive_

When the last note dies away, the silence that falls over the room threatens to deafen her.

He lets his hands fall from the keyboard and rubs them uncertainly on his thighs, as if he doesn’t know what to do with them now that the song is over. Bit by bit, he folds back into himself: his shoulders regain a self-conscious droop, his left leg starts bouncing, and he runs a restless hand through his hair. Like he doesn’t know what to do with all of himself.

“That was great,” she says softly. Startled, he lands a huge hand on the keyboard, getting a dramatic complaint from the piano. 

While his eyes only barely widen on seeing her there, he practically swivels on the bench, his whole body suddenly taut with tension he neither contains nor releases. Like a Jack-in-the-box that never quite sprung out when the box was opened. 

She thought she'd enjoy the surprise effect. It'd be a mild form of payback for his assholery, for shit like ‘you need a teacher’ and ‘let’s not get carried away’ and the bone-deep exasperation of the last few days. Thought she'd get a chuckle out of it.

She doesn't. 

What she gets instead is an unpleasant mirror she did not sign up for. She’d recognize that body language anywhere, it’s one of her own greatest hits: that’s fight or flight mode. 

Rey puts up her hands in an ‘I come unarmed’ gesture.

“Sorry, sorry!” she says. “Didn't mean to make you jump! I just… I heard music, and wanted to see who it was.”

He stares at her for a couple of heartbeats, until his shoulders slowly slump again.

“Right,” he says, his voice so quiet it’s nothing but a low rumble. “Right, yeah. Of course.” He runs his hand through his hair one more time, and Rey suddenly wishes her own hair wasn’t in a messy, unpresentable bun. And that she wasn’t in an old, oversized hoodie fished out of the laundry hamper. And that she could also run a hand through his hair, because it falls down his neck in dark, soft waves, and why does it look so damn good?!

Pushing those stray thoughts away, she shoves her hands in the front pouch of her hoodie. “And do you always say the spoken parts of ‘Do-Re-Mi’ too?” she jokes. 

He raises an eyebrow and she tenses, anticipating something along the lines of 'you don’t even know my name, and you're making fun of me?'. But what she hears is a genuine echo of surprise in his voice when he answers.

“Yeah, of course. That’s half of the fun.”

“I thought the fun was Julie Andrews singing,” she points out.

He hums. “Yeah, but you just heard me sing. I think we can all agree I’m no Julie Andrews,” he says, lips quirking up slightly in an odd mixture of solemn honesty and dry humor.

“I think we can, yeah,” she says with a grin.

His face softens into clear amusement. “You should see me trying to sing ‘Cell Block Tango’.”

There’s no holding back a snort this time; self-deprecating humor, who would’ve thought?

Abandoning her post at the door, she doesn’t miss the way his back straightens up imperceptibly as she finally comes into the room, or the way his eyes follow her every single move. She glances at the space next to him on the bench, sees him do the same, and chooses to stand next to the piano.

“So… why didn't you say you could play?” she asks; accuses, maybe.

He shrugs. “You never asked.”

She rolls her eyes, but… yeah, he's not really wrong. At no point was there a reason for him to flash around music credentials. _“You need a violin teacher. I know this because I can play the piano.”_ The musical equivalent of a ‘well, actually’, which would've only made her hate him more.

 _A real asshole would have done just that, though,_ she thinks. 

“You’re very good, ” she says. Might as well, at this point.

He doesn’t remotely try to contradict her, just nods casually. “Yeah."

Rey bites back a caustic remark as Rose’s daily prayer comes to mind: “may God grant me the unshakeable confidence of a white man". But the indifference with which he says it doesn’t really speak of confidence — it’s more like a simple fact, one he’s learned like any other and which doesn't seem to matter much.

Before she can think of an answer, he adds, “So are you.”

She opens her mouth, with no idea of what’s going to come out — _‘thank you’_ is the natural choice, but there’s also a good case to be made for _‘then why the hell did you say I need a teacher?’_ — when he suddenly turns on the bench and starts playing again. She promptly closes her mouth, because she knows those like she knows herself. Better, actually.

That’s her version of “Lovely”.

Maybe it’s a pedantic distinction to make, but she’s sure of it. She hears it in the way certain chords last longer than in the original, in the emphasis on certain notes. In how the passages are played with the same intention.

This is the piano she misses when she plays.

On an impulse, she sits next to him; quietly, without stopping, he moves his leg to give her more room.

He plays only the first half of the song, and soon the last notes reverberate around the room, dwindle, and disappear with the end of the chorus. When there's no longer a single trace of them hanging in the air, his hands fall back on his thighs and he gazes down at her with what would probably be an impassive face, if it weren't for the nearly pleading eyes.

Rey stares at him. What does she want to say? _'You liked my arrangement, then?'_ is too straightforward, and _'This is the accompaniment I've been dreaming of'_ is too out of the question.

She ends up stating the obvious. "That's 'Lovely'." 

There's the briefest, smallest of smiles there as he replies, "Thanks."

She huffs, but lets out a smile in spite of herself. "I mean it's _the song_ 'Lovely'," she says, refraining from adding 'you dork', because they're not there yet. She would like to get there though. Maybe.

Oddly enough, he seems surprised 

"Oh, that's the name? I don't really know the song, so," he lets a shrug finish the sentence for him.

She blinks. "You don't know the song? You haven't… heard it anywhere?"

“Just you,” he says simply.

Or at least, the tone of his voice is simple — quiet — but there’s nothing simple in the intensity with which he looks at her.

But… he heard it once? He heard her play it that one time, and he can already reproduce it? What the genuine fuck. Here she is, googling one sheet music after the other, with nothing to her name but a few crappy music classes from a decade ago, while Tall Guy swoops in with a 'I heard this once in my life' and plays a song he doesn't know fucking perfectly. What can she even say to that?!

"You didn't play," he says abruptly, sparing her from having to think of an adequate comment that won’t sound spiteful.

“What?”

“Thursday and Friday. You weren’t at your usual spot, so I wondered if you…” he hesitates and shrugs, leaving the thought incomplete and Rey to guess what exactly he wondered.

"Well, I needed strings, remember?"

His brow furrows. "There's that store Virtuoso right on Highland Avenue. You could've gone there if you didn't want to buy them here."

Rey feels her jaw drop. "I _tried_ to buy them here, but you—" she stops. They stare at each other in silence for a moment, until he nods at her, gently, encouraging her to go on.

Oh, the fucking _nerve._ He knows exactly why she didn’t buy the strings here! She snaps her mouth shut, refusing to give him the satisfaction.

“They're more expensive there,” she says, making an effort not to growl.

He looks at her for one second too long, as if waiting for more, before he looks away. “That they are; their prices are ridiculous. Well, let's solve that, then.” And with that he slaps his knees and gets up, moving with so much sudden energy it's like a coil unwinding all at once. He's practically out of the room already before Rey has the presence of mind to follow.

Back at the front of the store, Rey waits at the counter while he goes through the contents of a drawer.

"You wanted the Pirastro Gold set," he mumbles, not really asking, sliding the small pack on the counter at the same time she says 'yes'. 

She's surprised he remembers. But then, of course he does. He remembers an entire arrangement of a song he doesn't know, why wouldn't he remember the set of strings fit-for-professionals that the amateur busker around the corner wanted to buy? He probably had a good laugh about it when she left the store the other day.

“Thanks. You said sixty-five, right?” she asks, taking out her coin purse; she brought exact change, so the price had better not have gone up in the last three days. She takes out the bills, folded in eight to fit inside, and turns the purse upside down to drop the coins on the counter. She counted five dollars in quarters before she left home, so it should be all there, but she'll check again just to be sure 

A large hand pushes the coins away just as she begins counting them.

“It's on the house,” he says.

She frowns. “Why?!”

He purses his lips and doesn't answer.

Oh. He's _annoyed._

“These are for sale, right?” she asks, a tad too cheerfully. She doesn’t know why it bothers him, but she delights in it all the same.

He fixes her with a stare that she's pretty sure is meant to tell her to stop, before his eyes flit away from her and towards the window. He looks suddenly bored, like this conversation is the least interesting thing he could be doing right now. And she would buy it, too, if his evasion strategy weren’t so transparent.

“You didn't buy them on Thursday, so you couldn't play. You lost money.” He waves a dismissive hand towards the strings. “It's on the house.”

The near contempt of his voice rubs against every spike of Rey's pride, and she wants nothing more than to tell him to shove the strings right up his ass.

But it's sixty-five dollars. It's a whole electric bill.

Just as she opens her mouth to thank him, he shrugs and adds, still looking out the window. “That Mendini of yours is falling apart, so at least you have new strings now.”

Her violin. 'Falling apart.'

The unmitigated asshole.

A brand new 'fuck you' is right there, dancing at the tip of her tongue, but she swallows it back and gives him a tight-lipped smile. “Thank you, but I think I can take care of my violin just fine,” she says, already moving towards the door.

“Take the strings,” she hears him say tiredly.

“Nope,” she says, without turning around.

What does make her turn around as she pushes the door open is a sound she would’ve never in a million years imagined coming out of him: he splutters.

“You— will you— can you _just—_ ” he stops and takes a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose, and she can as good as see him trying to will away his frustration. “Just take the fucking strings.”

Oh, she wants to. Desperately. But her options right now are taking this asshole’s charity or spending close to a hundred dollars on a new set at Virtuoso, and she doesn’t know which one will cost her more.

He drops his hand, and there it is again: the pleading eyes, looking up at her even though she’s the shortest of the two.

For someone who tries that hard to look stoic, his eyes give away way too much.

He gestures pointedly at the pack on the counter. “Just… please.”

It’s the near-whisper that does it. Without a word, she goes back and takes the pack off the counter.

“Fine. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Silence.

He shifts on his feet, and she can’t help noticing he’s slouching again.

“Well, then. See you around,” she says, finally breaking the silence. Whether she wants to see him around or not is debatable, but she’s sure she will.

When he nods, she turns on her heels and leaves.

* * *

When the girl disappears down the street, Ben crosses his arms on the counter and tucks his chin between them.

Did he… did he just insult her violin?

Out of all the words that exist in the English lexicon, could he really not find anything better to say? Anything less blunt?! Jesus Christ, he's such an asshole sometimes.

'Sometimes' being a very generous assessment, when 'all the time' would probably be much more accurate. Just three days ago he laughed at her and implied she’s an amateur — which was the sole reason she didn’t buy the strings that day, and ended up missing two nights of busking.

Why, exactly, she chose not to call him out on it today is a question for the ages. He fully expected it and was ready for the berating he thoroughly earned. But she spared him.

 _'You just might be one of the best violinists I've ever met',_ was it that hard to say? _'You're the prettiest girl I've ever seen'_ is exceedingly out of the question, of course, and _‘You should do something about that disaster of a wrist’_ is better avoided altogether, but surely he could at least praise her skills as a musician. _'Sorry for insulting you the other day'_ would also be ideal.

He groans and buries his nose on his arms. Maybe he would’ve been able to think on his feet if she hadn't caught him off-guard, standing there at the door and watching him play. Or sitting next to him. He still can't believe how tiny she is.

_A laugh. "You're just like Chewie, aren't you? You have no idea how big you are."_

He pushes that memory away, back into the box where he locks all the rest of them, and lets his mind wander back to the girl. The memory of her should smart a little less than that of his mother's voice, but still smart all the same. Maybe there simply are no memories that don't hurt after enough time has passed.

Fuck, he didn't even manage to explain that the only reason he could play that song (“Lovely”?) is because she played it so well. She made it so… clear to him. He doesn’t know the song, has no idea who sings it, how old or how new it is — but he knows what it’s about. Every note she played is etched in his brain and ears, every chord sounded like he feels all the time.

He wonders if she feels it too. If that’s why she chose it for her set.

The mere thought of it should be absurd. No one that looks that adorable in an oversized hoodie and has such an easy smile would feel like Ben. Like they’re too small to take up that much space, too wild to come close, and too empty to be wanted.

But the idea that somehow she does still nags at him.

When Phasma comes back from her lunch break, she finds him still draped all over the counter. He gives her a grumble and a wave almost invisible to the naked eye; she takes it for the ‘welcome back’ that it’s supposed to be and gives him a “hey”, before going behind the counter and sitting at the computer.

A couple of minutes go by with her typing and him staring at the violins on display on the opposite wall. Eventually he moans, barely moving his chin from where it still rests on his arms.

“Phas?”

“Hmm?” More typing.

“I’m an idiot.”

“Yes. And?”

“That’s it.”

The typing goes on unaffected.

“Ben, please talk to me when you have something to say that I don’t already know.”

“Sorry.”

* * *

Before Rey can even turn the key in the lock, she hears Finn’s laughter coming from inside, and he’s the first thing she sees when she walks in.

“Hey, Peanut!” he smiles brightly at her from their little table in the living room. She smiles back at him with a ‘hey you!’, but her brow creases in confusion at the same time. Finn at their apartment is not exactly unheard of — it happens at least three times a week — but Sundays are usually the day he and Poe save to spend only with each other. By all accounts, he should be at home banging his boyfriend right now.

Behind him, Rose’s head peeks from the bathroom door. “Get in, loser, we’re going shopping.”

“Great! And shopping here would be…?”

Finn sits up straight and clears his throat. “In this case, ‘shopping’ is ‘going to The Resistance tonight to eat and drink for free’, _because,”_ he slams his hand on the table and opens up a smile, “Poe and I now have regular, weekly gigs there!”

“Shut up! Oh my God, this is fantastic!” Rey jumps into his arms and gives him the tightest hug she can. Soon she hears a grunt.

“Peanut… can’t breathe...”

“Sorry! Sorry,” she lets him go, and he makes a show of cracking his back and neck. She plops down on one of the dozens of cushions on the floor that pass as a couch. “How did that happen?!”

“Remember we played there last week? The owner really liked us, so now we’re in the regular rotation! Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, from nine to eleven!”

“Tell her about the free food,” Rose chimes in, moving from the bathroom to the bedroom.

Rey puts her chin on her hands. “Yes, tell me about the free food!”

Finn leans forward on the chair, and from his level of seriousness, one would think he's about to explain a very complicated heist to the rest of his team of thieves.

“Once a month, we can each take a plus one with us, to eat and drink for free when we’re playing.” He opens his hands. “Guess who our plus ones are?”

"The two girls who would kill you with their bare hands if they weren't your plus ones?"

"The very same," Finn grins. "So get ready, Poe's picking us up here in half an hour."

Barely twenty minutes have passed before Rey’s ready. She doesn't remember the last time she took a shower, washed and dried her hair so fast, but there can be no playing around when free food is involved.

As she’s trying to decide how to do her hair, Finn shows up at the door of her bedroom with the pack of strings in hand.

“Hey, you left this on the table,” he says, throwing it on her bed. “I forgot to ask: what did you think of our local prodigy?”

“What local prodigy?” she asks distractedly. Hair up? Hair down? She likes it down, but The Resistance is always so crowded, her neck is probably gonna get all sticky after just ten minutes in there.

“Ben Solo, of course!”

Her hair does look better when she wears it down. She puts it up on a ponytail and examines her profile. “Who’s Ben Solo?”

“Didn’t you see him at First Order? Tall, dark hair, looks constipated as hell?”

"Oh." Her hair tumbles down her shoulders as she lets it go and looks at Finn. "So that's his name?" she says, hoping she sounds suitably uninterested. Because she _is_ uninterested. Definitely uninterested. As uninterested as a human being can possibly be.

"But what do you mean, 'local prodigy'? I know he plays, but that seems—"

"Who plays what, what are we talking about, let me in!" Rose says, coming into the bedroom as well.

"Finn says Pretentious Tall Guy is a prodigy?!"

"Yeah, I know him!” Finn says. “We went to the same conservatory in New York!"

Rose's jaw drops, while Rey stands completely still.

"Shut up, you know that pretentious asshole?" Rose asks, looking like she'll swallow a fly at any second.

"Well, I mean, I know of him. He was…” he shakes his head, hilarity still plastered on his face, “I don’t know, like the celebrity of the school."

Rey sits down on her bed, brow furrowed in confusion at him, which is more than enough to spur Finn on; while she listens, a part of her is distantly amused at the thought that women are the ones supposedly into gossip. One hour with Finn is enough to dispel that myth.

"Okay, so first, his mom is, or at least was, the conductor of the NY Philharmonic.” Rey gasps, and Finn nods. “Yeah, I know! But if that wasn’t enough, guess who his dad is!"

She shakes her head. "No idea."

Finn enunciates the name as slowly as possible — a feat, given how short his next words are.

"Han. Solo."

She stares. "You're shitting me."

"Why, who's Han Solo?" asks Rose, looking from one to the other. Rey turns to her, not believing in what she’s about to say.

"His dad is one of the most famous jazz pianists of the 20th century.”

“He’s as famous as a white guy can be in jazz,” Finn adds.

Rose raises an eyebrow. “Sooo… Pretentious Tall Guy is a white dude with famous parents? What a shock.”

“Rose,” Rey says, horrified. “Han Solo is not ‘famous’. The Kardashians are famous. Han Solo is… he’s a legend!”

“Sure,” Rose replies, utterly unconcerned with legendary white people, “but that doesn’t make his son a prodigy. Just an entitled asshole, like any other white dude with famous parents.”

“You’re not wrong,” Finn scoffs, “but no, I’m telling you, when I started at the conservatory that guy had already won more music competitions than Usain Bolt’s got golden medals.”

Rey nearly laughs at the exaggeration — but the lingering memory of Ben Solo playing just that afternoon makes the statement much less absurd than it should be. She can… yeah, she can see it.

“Every hallway of the school had some article pinned on a board about another competition the golden boy won,” Finn goes on. “And I saw him play a couple of times before he disappeared, he was… the guy was _good._ But yeah, he definitely walked around like he owned the place.”

“Hmm, that tracks,” Rey mumbles, and then her brain catches on to a key word in the narration. “Wait. ‘Before he disappeared’?”

“He vanished! Just like that,” Finn snaps his fingers. “He was going to audition to Juilliard, and then he… didn’t. He completely disappeared, and no one ever saw him again. When we moved here last year and I saw him at the store? I almost shat a brick.”

“Did he remember you?” Rey asks, curious.

Finn shakes his head. “Nah, he didn’t even know I existed back then. I was just a small kid on a scholarship, and he was almost graduating. And you know, he was music royalty from the Upper East Side,” he ends with a shrug, leaving his friends to fill in the blanks they’re far too well-acquainted with. Old money. They know the interactions people like them and Old Money are supposed to have: none whatsoever.

So… Tall Guy, Ben Solo, had money, famous parents, a brilliant career in music and an essentially guaranteed ride to freaking Juilliard… and he disappeared? Why would anyo—

Finn’s phone puts an end to any coherent line of thought when it starts blasting Wizkid’s “Daddy Yo” — his ringtone for Poe. They exchange a couple of quick words before Finn turns to them: “Poe’s downstairs, let’s go.”

The subject is dropped, and the minute they get into Poe’s car the conversation turns to their new gig. After that, between Poe’s incessant talking (Rey just wishes he would shut up sometimes, it’s not too much to ask for), and she and Rose having to share the backseat with Poe’s cajón and Finn’s guitar, Tall Guy slips from her mind completely.

At The Resistance, which once again has attracted more people than its capacity can hold, the free pints of beer keep coming and she has little opportunity to think of anything else. Especially when there’s such a humongous double burger in front of her, and Poe and Finn are working the crowd like a fiddle. If they knew how to play the fiddle.

When they get to their cover of “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, though, and she laments there’s no keyboard to go with it, that split second is enough to bring back the image of Tall G— Ben Solo at the piano. While Poe and the entire bar belt out _“Sooo Sally can’t wait”_ at the top of their lungs, Rey imagines Solo playing it. She's sure he can. He probably knows it well, if he’s around the same age as Poe; guys who grew up in the 90’s have such a raging boner for Oasis it’s not even funny.

On the other hand, he’s a musical nerd, apparently, so who knows? If he likes things like _Sound of Music_ and _Chicago…_ the thought of him trying to sing “Cell Block Tango” comes back with a vengeance, not for the first time today, and she stuffs her mouth with the hamburger to stop herself from laughing.

When the duo moves on to their version of “Valerie”, as Rose and everyone around them sing along, she wonders how Solo would play it — would he keep it upbeat with the underlying tinge of melancholy, or would he lean into it and make it straight up wistful? She imagines he can pull both off.

After that, the several questions she still has about him come back and make themselves at home in her mind, but it’s not until she gets home, a little past midnight, that she can devote them full attention. In her pajamas, enveloped in her bed covers and the silence of the apartment, she finally does what she’s been itching to do: she googles ‘Ben Solo’.

That doesn’t give her the results she was looking for; the first result page has nothing but Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. Of course, that search was vague as hell. She adds ‘chandrila conservatory’, the music school she knows Finn went to, and voila, the first result is an article from 2003. 

**Benjamin Solo wins 18th Annual Irving M. Klein International String Competition.** **  
**_He receives $13,000 as well as various performance opportunities_

Rey smiles involuntarily at the picture of a tiny Ben Solo (or well, as tiny as he can be), but scoffs at the subheader. As if an Upper East Side kid needed to be given oppor— hold on. Her eyes go back to the title. ‘String Competition’.

String???

 _Following a final round last Sunday at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the first prize of the 18th_ _Irving M. Klein International String Competition has been awarded to Benjamin Solo._

_The 16-year-old violinist, who studies under Luke Skywalker at the Chandrila Conservatory of Music in Manhattan, receives $13,000. His winning programme included movements from the Bach Sonata No. 1 in G Minor, Mozart’s Sonata No. 18 in G Major and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major, op. 35._

_Benjamin has won numerous awards, including 1st place at the 2003 Menuhin-Dowling Competition, the 2002 CMTANC Competition, the 2003 CYS Concerto Competition, the 2003 Andrea Postacchini International Violin Competition, and Grand Prize at the 2003 Mondavi Center Competition. In 2001, Benjamin was invited to play at Carnegie Hall for the American Fine Arts Festival. He has performed with several orchestras, such as the California Youth Symphony, Palo Alto Philharmonic, University of Texas Orchestra, Symphony Parnassus, Camellia Symphony Orchestra, and Master Sinfonia Chamber Orchestra._

Rey stares at the words, her brain short-circuiting in an attempt to decide what to hold on to first: the fact that Solo is a violinist and decided not to mention it at all, or on the sheer number of competitions he’s won? Should she even try to process the fact that he studied under _Luke Fucking Skywalker,_ the legend himself?!

What on earth is such a person doing working a 9 to 5 job at a music store, hidden away in some boring, gentrified neighborhood? Finn said he vanished. Vanished how, why?

What about his family?

She types ‘Han Solo’ into the search bar, even though she already knows what she’s going to find.

**Han Solo, jazz piano legend, dies in car crash** **  
**_Solo, 53, was driving a 1969 Ford Falcon when it crashed north of Manhattan_

Skipping the details of the accident and reports of the local sheriff, she gets to what she was hoping to find.

_Solo leaves behind his wife Leia Organa and one son._

This time she types ‘Leia Organa’, and clicks on the first result — a Wikipedia link.

**Leia Organa**

Leia Organa Solo (born October 21, 1964) is an American conductor and violinist. She is currently music director of the New York Philharmonic. ****

**1 Biography**

**1.1 Career**

**1.2 Personal life**

**2 References**

**3 External links**

Rey skims the biography (Organa was born in New York to a famous violinist father and a US senator mother, because of course she was) and goes straight to what matters to her at the moment.

**Personal life**

Organa married jazz pianist Han Solo in 1987. That same year they had a son, Benjamin Solo.

Rey lowers her phone and stares at the ceiling. All those competitions and awards, all those legends around him, a path clear to the best music school in the world. And he threw it all away. She can’t even begin to imagine how entitled someone has to be to turn their back on life offering you its very best on a silver platter.

 _“_ _Just an entitled asshole, like any other white dude with famous parents._ _”_

 _“Somebody crowd me with love_ _  
__Somebody force me to care”_

Entitled… or something else.

For some reason, among everything she’s just learned, what she ends up latching onto is the fact people call him ‘Ben’. It’s so… small. And dear. It shouldn’t suit a man that size, perhaps, but it does suit the guy whose eyes beg and whose shoulders droop — as if he, too, agreed that he’s way too tall and was trying to fix it, to go by unnoticed, and maybe even disappear.

With an irritated sigh, she throws the covers aside, gets up, and marches towards the living room to grab her violin, because she just won’t sleep otherwise. She hates her brain sometimes. 

She brings her violin into her room; carefully, lovingly, she changes the E string and tunes it. It’s almost one in the morning, but the walls are thick enough, and the neighbor over at 202 can’t hear her when she plays in her room. Rose is not a concern: girl can sleep through a tornado, especially after a few pints.

Closing her eyes, she lets her mind wander back to that afternoon, back to a room full of pianos and a song she doesn’t quite know. And smiles, her bow tentatively moving along the strings.

Two can play that song.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To have a musician AU of reylo and not use Adam Driver's rendition of "Being Alive" in "Marriage Story" is a waste of a great opportunity, and I couldn't let that happen XD In case you haven't watched "Marriage Story", [here's a link to the scene!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW8IaLXvOgk) I love this man with my entire soul.  
> And [here's the version of "Tara's Theme"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqlBFkEALQ8) Rey listened to.
> 
> [The playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1RqwR4RUvHeQTaysBcN6S7?si=yYl_w1ihQayB6FdNzRwNbQ) with all the songs used so far has been properly updated with this chapter's songs. ^^
> 
> As for update schedule: every other Monday! (Barred the unexpected, ofc.)
> 
> Thank you to my wonderful betas [Rae](https://twitter.com/regardingluv) and [Luc](https://twitter.com/maydaymaydei). ♥♥♥
> 
> Come find me on [Tumblr](http://thehobbem.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thehobbem), where it's shit posting, reylo, Star Wars and Adam Driver 24/7 XD. You can also read my [Pride & Prejudice/AITA AU text fic on Twitter](https://twitter.com/thehobbem/status/1228487438542286849). ^^


	3. and I can’t go back

With his dinner in a bag, Ben leaves the Thai restaurant and makes his way back home. He glances at his watch: 7:42. She should be there by now.

The fact that he desperately hopes she'll be there is an entirely separate matter.

It doesn’t take long for him to discern the familiar sound of strings coming from the end of the block, and he automatically picks up the pace.

He’s some three or four stores away from the corner when he recognizes the song — as if he wouldn’t recognize the six most famous violin notes in recent rock ‘n roll history — and he’s already humming it as he gets closer.

_I'll take you down the only road I've ever been down_

When he gets to her usual spot, his view is more than a little obstructed by five or six people around her, because yeah, of course “Bitter Sweet Symphony” would attract a small crowd. He purses his lips; why are there so many people? It’s Monday, people should just go home. Back to their families or something, and let him see the girl in peace.

A peek at her open violin case, with a few dollar bills in it already, tells him she would strongly disagree with that request; the more people watching, the merrier her wallet will be by the end of the day. Well, assuming one can call a ridiculous fluffy coin purse thing in the shape of an orange M&M a ‘wallet’. When she turned that thing upside down on the counter, it was all he could do not to facepalm.

Relegated once again to the back of the audience, Ben stretches his neck: she’s moving again. With the sleeves of her woolen sweater rolled up and her eyes closed, she sways in what’s a perfect picture of peace and unbridled enthusiasm, like she doesn’t care whether she has an audience or not. Only about the music. It’s so charming he has to cover his mouth to hide a smile, and nearly enough to make him forget about her collapsed wrist. (Almost. He does have functioning eyes, after all.)

 _No change, I can’t change, I can’t change, I can’t change_ _  
_ _But I’m here in my mold, I am here in my mold_

What she did with the piece, however, surpasses any criticism of her wrist and any consideration about how distractingly pretty she is. She took one of the most famous songs of the entire Britpop catalog and made it absolutely her own — still unmistakable, but with different intervals and in a different, minor key. And that _fluidity_. One note flows into the next like a river, instead of the shorter, almost blunt notes of the original; it’s solemn, mature, like listening to a song that grew up from a teenager in misery to a somber adult.

In short, it’s too close for comfort.

_I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me_

If she can accidentally dissect him like that, what wouldn’t she do if she actually knew him? (Although there’s the very real possibility that she’s dissecting herself.)

When the song is over and she opens her eyes, Ben immediately drops from the tiptoe he didn’t realize he was standing on. Better go unnoticed. He managed to piss her off both times they talked, and he can guess she’s not looking forward to a replay. He should leave while people appla—

Her eyes land on him.

Of course they do, he’s more than a bit hard to miss. Instinctively, he steps behind the lamp post next to him, as if it could somehow shield him from view.

Not wasting a single second, and maintaining eye contact with him, she begins the next song; and what she plays is something he both knows too well and has never heard.

 _Someone to hold you too close_ _  
_ _Someone to hurt you too deep_

It’s a violin version of “Being Alive”.

He’s never heard anyone play it like that, like the violin is the principal voice. It’s fascinating. Soon he finds himself mouthing the lyrics, eyeing her wrist, her feet, the small, sly smile tugging at the corner of her lips, and wondering why she’s playing this after flagrantly finding him in the audience.

 _Someone to crowd you with love_ _  
_ _Someone to force you to care_

It’s slightly rough around the edges, but she makes it more vivid and clear than he ever did. Perhaps the difference is that he plays it like a question, while she plays it like an answer.

By the end of the song, the audience has shrunk to only him and an old couple who drops an unreasonable amount of coins into the violin case (Ben hopes they at least add up to a whole dollar). As they tell her how much they loved her performance and she smiles in reply, Ben stares. Her smile is so… open. Bright. It makes his heart go slack.

She’s still talking to the old couple when Ben steps from behind the lamp post and fumbles for his wallet. The only thing he’s got in there today is a five, and he drops it in the case just as the couple bids her a good night and walks away; when he looks back at the girl, she’s eyeing him with raised eyebrows, and not without some amusement.

He gives her a small wave, one that looks half like a wave and half like he’s showing her his dinner, with the bag hanging from his arm like a pendulum. “Hi.”

When she gives him a small “hi” in return, he clears his throat. “I’ve just…” he gestures at the case on the ground.

“Yeah, I saw it.” She gives the case a glance before going back to him. “A five? Getting stingier, aren’t we?” she says, wrinkling her nose.

His heart jolts in place. She’s teasing him.

He huffs out a chuckle. “Can’t give you a twenty every night, that’s not how this works.”

“Hmm. How does this work, then?”

Isn’t that the right question. “You got me.”

After a quick moment of hesitation, she gives him her violin and bow with a “here, take this”. He takes it on pure reflex, while she takes out her ‘coin purse’ (if it even merits the name), and shoves today’s tips in it.

The sheer absence of method with which she crams the bills inside is nothing short of appalling, and it vaguely horrifies Ben, but it’s the violin in his hands that begs for attention. When was the last time he held one? Or, more importantly, the last time he wanted to?

It feels like a lifetime ago.

His eyes go back to the girl, and find her kneeling by her now empty case, holding out a hand in for her instrument back, while her eyes watch him intently. Scrutinize him, really, and he suddenly feels made of glass. With a low “sorry,” he gives her the violin and the bow back.

Unsure of what to do next, he leans against the post and crosses his arms. “You don’t usually pick stuff from musicals.”

“True,” she says, carefully placing the violin in its case, “but I wanted to see if I could do what you did. Not too bad for my first attempt, I think.”

Ben blinks, and again, and twice more. The forefront of his mind wonders what she’s talking about, but the smaller, more involuntary part of it marvels at her freckles, and the way her hair falls in cascades of chestnut and brushes her slender shoulders — so slender, because she still looks… so small. At least to him. (So how come she doesn’t feel small at all?)

“Do what I did?” he echoes.

“Play a song you’ve only heard once? You know, like you did with ‘Lovely’.”

“Hmm, sure.” Then her full meaning registers in his brain. “Wait. You don’t know this song?”

He must’ve said it wrong somehow, because she practically bristles at it.

“Yeah, so what? Not everyone knows all the songs of all the musicals,” she says defensively.

“No no no, I mean… you’ve only heard _me_ play it?”

To his relief, her face clears in understanding. “Oh! Yeah, I just…” she shrugs, and it’s the first time in their (admittedly brief) interactions that he sees a shade of awkwardness settle on her. “I quite liked it. Gotta see if it’s on Spotify. I don’t know which musical it’s from, but—”

 _“Company,_ by Sondheim,” Ben answers mechanically. “But your version was… really good. I’ve never heard it like that before.”

She places the amp and the pedal in the case, and closes it with a loud click. “Right. How come I need lessons, then?”

He frowns. “You need lessons? Since when?” The mere notion is ludicrous, what would she need lessons for?

It’s her turn to blink at him, because that’s apparently what they’re doing: taking turns in a duet neither of them knows how it goes.

“You said so!”

“When?!”

“The same day you gave me that twenty!”

He snorts derisively. “I think I would remember that.”

"You dropped that twenty into my case, looked straight into my eyes and said 'you need a teacher'," she says, with a very insulting attempt at Ben's voice that is, he hopes, nowhere near accurate.

It must be written on his face when realization hits, because her own face lights up in a silent, self-satisfied ‘a-ha’.

“I meant your collapsed wrist.”

She stills. “What?”

“Your collapsed wrist. It's atrocious,” he says, and while he doesn’t immediately slap his own mouth like every bone in his body is telling him to, he’s pretty sure he’s just winced. His entire life is one poor choice of words after another. Well, there’s something to be said for brutal honesty. Probably. Hopefully.

Her eyes widen, and he adds, a bit more softly now, “I didn’t mean your playing; your playing is fine. Great, actually. But that wrist is gonna give you carpal tunnel pretty soon, and a teacher would… could help you with that.”

God, he’s so bad at this. Whatever this is.

The good news is that she looks less offended than he predicted. He should know, he’s memorized what her exasperation looks like — her whole face scrunching up and looking way more adorable than it has any right to be. This is not quite that. She does look annoyed, but more… resignedly so.

“Yeah, I know. My violin teacher tried to get me to knock it off, but… that was a long time ago.”

“Also, um,” he says, because he owes her that much, “I’m… what I said about your violin the other day is not... you clearly take very good care of it. But it’s really a violin for beginners.”

She slings her bag over her shoulder and crosses her arms, glowering at him. “When I said I was a professional, you laughed,” she points out. “So I guess this is good enough for me.”

Right. There’s that, too. “Yeah, that was… bullshit,” he half-mumbles, looking away. “Of course you’re a professional. And you should have a better violin.”

A sigh. “Better violins are expensive, I thought you knew that,” she says in a low voice. “Don’t you sell them for a living?”

Before he can answer, she’s walking past him. Leaving. Yeah, well, it was bound to happen.

“You go that way too, right?” she asks over her shoulder, tilting her head towards the general direction of Elm St.

It takes him a full second to collect himself. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” His feet finally move as he accepts the implied invitation, and they start on their way side by side.

At this point, there’s only one thing left to do. He holds out his hand. “I’m Ben.”

There’s a pause, a single moment during which he’s sure she’ll leave him hanging, before she takes his hand.

“I’m Rey.”  
  


* * *

  
They walk in silence for a minute or two.

Rey would very much like to pick up the thread of their conversation, even if she doesn’t know where to begin. But first she has to catch up with Solo: the man _strides_ rather than walks, and every step he takes demands two out of her. Damn his stupidly long legs (with… thick, well-shaped thighs that her eyes keep going back to more often than she’d like to admit.)

“We could go slower, you know,” she puffs out eventually. “I’m a bit shorter than you.”

He immediately shortens his stride to match hers.

“Sorry.” And after a beat, “That’s not accurate, though.”

Looking up, she finds him smirking.

“You’re a lot shorter than me.”

A glare is the only answer she dignifies that with, which only makes his smirk grow wider. Jackass. She’s not even that short!

But that smirk is a revelation in and of itself; it suits him far too well.

She screws her nose at him. “What are you that tall for, anyway?”

“No idea,” he replies seriously, “it just makes it harder to fit in places.”

“Should’ve thought of that before being tall.”

“I definitely should’ve, yeah,” he replies, and the plain earnestness with which he says it, as if she's made an excellent point, makes her bite back some laughter.

What Rey really wants to say next goes something like _‘So, tell me what it’s like to be the son of a freaking legend and to win all the prizes ever’,_ but that’s likely not the best wording. 

“So, um… do you play?” she tries.

“Yeah,” Solo says, his brow knitting in visible confusion, “you saw me playing?”

She rolls her eyes. “I meant the violin.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t answer right away, seemingly distracted by some linen on his sweater for a few moments. Then, “Why would you think that?”

“Well, you know.” _Because I know you do._ “Since you know so much about collapsed wrists and whatnot.”

“Right. Yeah, I learned the basics,” he says, eyes stuck firmly ahead as they walk. And with that, two things dawn on Rey.

One: he’s a lousy liar.

Two: he doesn’t want to talk about it.

He could lord it over her, flaunt every single prize he’s won, every orchestra he’s played with, and brag about being Luke Skywalker’s student. Instead, he hides it like a shameful secret.

If there’s one thing Rey can sympathize with is not wanting to talk about the past.

“What about you,” he says, turning the conversation back to her, which is her least favorite topic, “why the violin?”

It’s a split-second decision, and she gives in. “Okay, look: you can’t laugh”

He raises an eyebrow. “You do realize now I will? You’ve just raised the temptation right up to here,” he says, indicating a spot just above his head.

She sighs, trying not to smile. “I was in Year 6—”

“Which in American would be…?”

“Um, eleven years old?” He nods, and she continues, “There was a talent show at school, and someone played this song I love on the violin, and… you know, I was a child and I thought ‘hey, if I have a violin, I can do that too! I can play this song forever!’” It sounds so ridiculous, she can’t believe she’s saying those words out loud. “I signed up for the music program at school right the next day, and… that was it.”

Solo hums with a faraway look. “Yeah, there’s always that minute, that one moment when you hear something and go ‘I need to learn how to do _that’,”_ he says, punctuating ‘that’ with an incisive gesture. “And then there’s no going back.”

“Yeah, exactly!”

He looks at her again. “And what was the song?”

“It was— ugh, God, don’t laugh, I was eleven!”

He snorts. “Can’t make any promises.”

That he’s going to laugh is a sure thing. His mother is the music director of one of the greatest symphony orchestras in the country, his father was one of the greatest jazz players in America; there’s no way he didn’t grow up listening almost exclusively to Beethoven and Rachmaninoff and Miles Davis and the likes, everything she only discovered much later in life.

“‘Tale as Old as Time’,” she mumbles, bracing herself for the derision she knows is coming.

Instead of that, he slowly nods, looking… impressed?

“Howard Ashman and Alan Menken,” he says, “yeah, that song is pure gold.”

Rey halts in the middle of the sidewalk, and he’s startled into doing the same.

“You serious? You think so too?” she asks, practically gaping at him.

“Yeah, of course! Anyone with a brain does.” He looks at her suspiciously. “Why are you so shocked?”

“It’s just… you don’t exactly scream ‘Disney’.”

Shoving his hands in his pockets, Ben leans forward and bridges a lot of the distance between them. “You know, I’m feeling a little judged here,” he says, with an overly distracting mouth that twitches ever so slightly at the corners, and eyes that swim with amusement.

Breathing out a small “yes, well,” she resumes walking — not because they’re blocking the way, but because she needs to stop staring at how full his lips are.

“You should play it someday,” he says suddenly, and at her look of confusion, he elaborates, “‘Tale as Old as Time’. Your version would be great.”

She offers no answer beyond a non-committal noise. It’s not that she doesn’t agree, but rather that she can’t go around _saying_ it.

“But you know that,” he adds.

“Know what?”

He looks at her, mildly surprised. “That your version would be great.”

“That’s quite an assumption!”

“If you didn’t think so, you wouldn’t go around changing other people’s music,” he says nonchalantly. “You’d just play them as they are. You change them because you think you have something to add. Which you do, so you’re right.”

Rey doesn’t answer. Is that a compliment? It doesn’t feel like one. It doesn’t feel like judgement either.

It feels like being seen.

Whether that’s more uncomfortable than being judged is a question for later.

“Do you want some coffee?” he asks all of a sudden.

“Sorry?”

He stops and points at the store on his left, and she realizes they’re in front of the coffee shop.

“I usually buy some before going home, I um… I may or may not have a coffee addiction,” he says with a small crooked smile (a little self-deprecating thing that seems to come out mostly on reflex) “so I was wondering if you… I mean, I realize it’s late, and maybe you won’t be able to sleep later? I don’t know how you react to caffeine at night, so I understand if—”

“Coffee sounds great,” Rey interrupts him before he goes on much further. Of all the possible adjectives, ‘rambler’ is a very unexpected addition to the list of things Benjamin Solo is supposed to be (entitled asshole, Upper East Side New Yorker, music snob, prodigy). On the other hand, it does fit all the things _Ben_ is turning out to be (open, amusing, solemn, awkward). Someone she actually wants to talk to enough to spend a portion of tonight’s tips on some overpriced coffee.

He doesn’t have a smile to offer — full-on smiles don’t seem to be his thing — but his face does relax visibly. Wordlessly, he holds the door open for her, and she walks in.

As they stand in line, she scans the menu in search of something that won’t leave a giant hole in her weekly budget, until he makes her jump by murmuring way too close to her ear, “You know it’s on me, right?”

She turns around, hoping her heart beating up an entire percussion section is not _too_ audible; the quiet rumble of his voice and his mouth so damn near her ear make for a very poor combination, at least where the goosebumps on her arm are concerned.

“That’s okay, you don’t have t—”

“I invited you,” he says firmly. “And besides, one single cup of their ‘coffee’ will eat one third of the tips you got tonight,” he says, with dry emphasis on the word ‘coffee’ and very little thought to the social norm of not referencing other people’s financial situation.

‘Blunt’. That’s the one adjective that seems to fit both Benjamin Solo and Ben. There was bound to be some overlap somewhere, after all. ‘Insufferably right’ seems to be another.

“Fine,” she mutters. Turning to the cashier, she makes a point of ordering the most expensive caramel frappuccino she finds on the menu. Venti.

Behind her, she hears a faint chuckle.

Yeah. Being seen definitely makes for a more uncomfortable scenario than being judged.  
  


♪♫♬

“Don’t get me wrong, she’s very good — she’s excellent, but ‘best vocalist of her generation’?” Ben scoffs. “I don’t think so.”

Rey stares, baffled by the hill he’s choosing to die on.

“Are you implying Adele is not a good singer?” she asks, not even believing she has to utter the words ‘Adele’ and ‘not a good singer’ in the same sentence.

“No no no no no, that’s not what I’m saying! No, her vocal technique is _insane._ She has a great voice, but her range is completely stagnant. It stays within an octave or two, and that’s it. People need to look to musical theater to find actual range, not— pff, not Adele.”

“Huh,” is all she says before taking another sip of her drink. Now that she thinks about it, he’s absolutely right. Holy crap.

He’s right, and he’s also the cutest thing to watch. His hands move enthusiastically while he talks, like they have a life of their own, and she has a hard time not staring at them (those hands are _massive)._ And there’s something about the surety with which he moves, the way he sits up in that chair, back and shoulders straight like an arrow, that reminds her of something she can’t quite pinpoint at the moment.

“And who would you say is a great vocalist, then?” she asks.

“Easy. Joni Mitchell,” Ben says, without missing a beat.

She rolls her eyes. “Someone from this century.”

“You— she— what?” he splutters, and Rey takes another sip, biting on the straw not to laugh. 

“She’s one of the greatest voices in the history of music,” he says, incredulous, before squinting at her. “And what do you mean, ‘from this century’? You were playing ‘Eleanor Rigby’ just the other day!”

“Okay, fair. Can’t believe you remember that, though!”

“How can I forget, that song is great. I grew up with it, it’s my da—” he cuts himself off. Pauses. “It’s an old favorite,” he finishes quietly, before downing a few enormous gulps of his coffee; when he puts the cup down, he gives her a tight-lipped smile. “Best pop song ever written.”

It takes Rey all of one second to decide she hates that particular smile. Odds are he hates it too.

She steers the conversation towards another topic.

“And… you liked ‘Lovely’ as well, even though you don’t know it?”

He shakes his head. “Never heard it, no idea who sings it.”

“Billie Eilish! Highly recommend a listen!”

With serious eyes that border on amusement again, he gives her a small bow. “I’ll give him a try.”

Rey opens her mouth to correct the pronoun, and closes it. Better let him discover it on his own. He _really_ doesn’t know Billie Eilish, wow.

...What else doesn’t he know?

“And um… tell me, Ben,” she says, leaning forward with her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands. “Do you like Hozier?” she asks, showering him with a smile.

He doesn’t answer, staring at her intently for what must be an entire five seconds before he blinks again and seems to wake up.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Do you like Hozier?” she repeats.

“Oh. Don’t know him either.”

She gasps. “Ben! What do you mean?! You haven’t heard ‘Take me to Church’?!”

“I— maybe?” he says, confused. “I listen to a lot of things I don’t know at the store. I take turns with Phas and Hux — they work there too — for control of the playlist of the day. I get some good stuff from their playlists, but there’s a lot I don’t pay attention to,” he explains apologetically before adding drily, “specially when it’s Hux’s day.”

“Hmm, I see. So when it’s your day, it’s only old songs, then?” That would certainly explain “Stand by Me” playing the first time she went to First Order.

He points a finger at her. “I resent that. I listen to new stuff too.”

“U-hu. Such as?”

“Such aaas…” he fumbles for a moment before finding a name, “Lady Gaga.”

“A singer who rose to fame more than ten years ago is your idea of ‘new stuff’?” she asks, raising her eyebrows in clear judgement.

He shifts on his seat. “...No?”

“Okay, how about Halsey?”

“No.”

“Dua Lipa?”

“Nope.”

“Do you know any artist in The Hot 100?!”

“...Justin Bieber?”

“Is that a wild guess?” she asks flatly.

He grins, which has to be his first smile of tonight. “It absolutely is. Was I right?”

“Yeah, you were,” she says huffing out an annoyed sigh. “He never truly goes away.”

Ben hums sympathetically.

“Okay, that’s it, sir,” she says, and holds out her hand. “Your phone.”

“What?”

“Give me your phone,” she repeats firmly.

He takes his phone off the table defensively. “No, what for?!”

“You need some musical education, I can’t let you be stuck in the 80’s!”

“I’m not stuck in the 80’s!”

“Fine, early 00’s, then,” she says, and he has the grace of visibly deflating at the correction. “Come on, let me bring you into the 21st century.”

She makes a beckoning gesture. With an eye roll and a muttered “fine,” he unlocks his phone and gives it to her. She notices the home screen wallpaper is the one that came with the phone, but doesn’t comment on it.

After shifting through his apps back and forth, Rey looks up. “Ben, don’t you have Spotify?” The blank look on his face tells her everything she needs to know. “Never mind.”

She finds YouTube in there and looks at the search bar for a few seconds, thinking. He needs to be brought into present day music stat, but just major hits are not enough. There are tons of smaller artists and singles out there the average listener is not aware of, though they absolutely should be. Music a nerd like Ben should get to experience.

Making a few choices, Rey starts copying links onto his notes app, and typing a few notes.

“And what are you going to listen to, then?” he asks.

She shoots him a glance. “What do you mean?”

“Well, if you’re gonna give me recommendations, it’s only fair that I give you some as well.”

Yeah, that makes sense. And she’d be lying if she said she’s not curious to know what kind of music he’ll suggest. She slides her phone towards him, and _damn,_ her phone looks like a miniature in his hands.

They both work in silence for a few minutes. When Rey’s done, she watches him furiously typing on her phone, and suddenly remembers something.

“Do you like Oasis?”

He looks up at her, fingers stilling on the screen. “That’s… out of the blue. But, yeah, I do. Unfortunately.”

Her brow wrinkles. “Unfortunately?”

With a sigh, he leans back and runs a hand through his hair, preparing to answer her, and it hits her again just how _attractive_ he is. Those hands and those shoulders, that hair. It’s unfair to everyone around him, most of all Rey.

“Their music is great, but… they’re such pretentious _assholes,”_ he says.

“Pff, look who’s talking!”

“What?! I’m not a pretentious as—” he stops. After some consideration, he corrects himself. “I’m not pretentious.”

She smiles. “Are you sure about that?”

He grins again, wider this time. “No, not really.”

The grin has her holding her breath: _he has a dimple._ Right there, on his right cheek.

Shit.  
  


♪♫♬

  
It’s close to 10 PM by the time they get close to the corner of Holland and Winter — a walk that should’ve taken them all of five minutes, but that was stretched into two hours.

“Tell me where you want me to leave you,” Ben says, “I don’t know if you take the subway or…”

“Oh no, I live around here. I’ll turn right on Winter and I’ll be home in two minutes. You don’t have to take me,” she says. What she doesn’t mention is that she should’ve turned right two streets ago. It would’ve been quicker, but it would’ve also cut the night short much too soon.

“Well, if you’re sure… this is me, actually.”

She blinks, and looks at the building on her right: it’s First Order, with all of its lights out and nothing but dark visible through the glass door.

“But that’s… the shop.”

“Mhmm. And I live here.”

“You live in the shop?!”

He rolls her eyes, and points up. Following the direction of his finger, she sees two more stories above ground level.

“Second floor is our stock, third floor is me.”

“So, are you… is the shop yours?” she asks doubtfully. Finn mentioned that this was a nation-wide chain, so that seems unlikely. But then again, Upper East Side, so who knows?

“God, no.” He seems appalled by the idea. “No, the owner… lets me live here.”

“Wow. Perks of being a good employee?”

But Ben shakes his head, still looking up at the windows above the store. “No, we just… we go way back,” he mumbles. “Anyway, that’s me. So I guess… you’re going?”

“Yeah, it’s getting pretty late. This was great, though,” she rushes to add, giving him his cue for the next step.

He looks at her, taking a deep breath and puffing out his cheeks a little. She wouldn’t have believed a man this huge and handsome to be this adorably awkward if she weren’t seeing it right now, it’s insane.

This is it. This is when he asks for her number and asks her out.

“You could join me.”

Silence.

“Sorry?”

“Upstairs. You could stay the night,” he says.

She could stay— what? Where’s the ‘we should do this again’, the ‘are you free this Saturday’? Join him upstairs, what kind of bullshit…?!

“Is _that_ what you were thinking all night?” she practically hisses.

His eyes widen “What? No, I just tho—”

She’s already taking a couple of steps back, because either she does that or she slaps the surprise the fuck off his face. “I’ll tell you what: how about you join _yourself_ upstairs, while I go to _my_ house and pretend tonight never happened? I’m leaving. Have a great life, and thanks for the coffee.”

With that, she turns on her heels and hurries away without looking back.  
  


* * *

  
Lying on his bed, Ben stares at the ceiling.

He’s not sure how long he’s been staring at it, or what time it is anymore; the only thing he’s 100% sure of is that he’s a fucking moron.

 _‘You could join me’_ ? What did he— what was he thinking?! ‘Would you like to do this again’ or ‘Can I call you’, all perfectly good things he could’ve said. But no. No, he chose ‘you could join me’. The words crossed his mind, and instead of brushing them away, he said them with his full chest, like the asshole that he is.

He’s never wanted to see more of someone beyond the infrequent, meaningless one-night stand. This was the first time in more than a decade he's met someone he wanted to talk to — really talk, not just make conversation. And watch her smile. He became so infatuated with her smiles that he actually missed one of her questions while he was too busy staring.

Make her smile and listen to her till dawn broke, these were the two things he wanted to do. But what he _did_ was suggest they come up to his bedroom and fuck.

Not for the first time, he wonders why he couldn’t inherit his father’s easy charm, or his mother’s eloquence; instead, what he got from them was the Solo nose and the tendency to talk back. That’s all he has, plus the foot he shoved into his own mouth and a list of song recommendations from a girl who’s probably never talking to him again.

He grabs his phone and opens his notes app; he might as well delete the untitled document she created and call it a night.

_“You need some musical education, I can’t let you be stuck in the 80’s!”_

...But he could look at it first.

With a sigh, he opens the document.

> \- billie eilish, khalid, lovely [ www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Pl8CzNzCw  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Pl8CzNzCw)Haunting lyrics, eery melody, dramatic, heart wrenching. You wouldn’t think two people with such different styles would be so harmonious, and yet! Also: perfect piano & violin duo
> 
> \- billie eilish, bad guy [ www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyDfgMOUjCI  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyDfgMOUjCI)Low-key banger, badass production, killer bassline, and her duh was the best musical moment of 2019. The future of pop
> 
> \- hozier, take me to church [ www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVjiKRfKpPI  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVjiKRfKpPI)Unique. Most powerful, raw vocals to come out of pop music in years. It’s blues and gospel and soul and folk. It’s a revolution.
> 
> \- halsey, control [ www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8V5dAli-Q  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so8V5dAli-Q)Creepiest song I’ve heard in a while?? The strings sound like they came straight out of a classical horror movie. Sinister chords, dark tones, chilling lyrics. It’s not a song, it’s a musical story, and it’s real
> 
> \- jump little children, cathedrals [ www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAxod5B-rXk  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAxod5B-rXk)Real instrumental depth, beautifully sung. Late 90’s (right up your alley!) but actually timeless. Can’t not relate to the chorus
> 
> \- of monsters and men, little talks [ www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghb6eDopW8I  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghb6eDopW8I)No idea how a song can be joyous and ghostly at the same time, but here it is. The accordion and the trumpet are *chef’s kiss*
> 
> \- fall out boy, the last of the real ones [ www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YAAyUFL1GQ  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YAAyUFL1GQ)AN ABSOLUTE BANGER. Aggressive, hard-hitting, dynamic, very lighthearted piano. I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like fall out boy, so get on it
> 
> \- the lumineers, life in the city [ www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLPsZT2ZAgE  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLPsZT2ZAgE)I recommend the whole album bc the tracks together tell a story from start to finish, but this is my favorite. It’s brilliant, intricate, and some of my favorite lyrics ever
> 
> PS: DOWNLOAD SPOTIFY ASAP

He reads and rereads the comments, a smile growing on his lips. He can practically hear her as he reads her words. She types exactly like she talks.

These music choices, though; three of them, to be precise, and also the comments that come with them. Unforeseen is one hell of an understatement. Who would’ve thought?

When making his list, he tried to come up with songs and artists she might not know — songs that are too old, or flying too low to ping the pop charts’ radar. Things that she wouldn’t know, but just might like to.

Only to find this.

Will she even bother to read his recommendations at this point? A remote probability, he’d say. But if she does, she’s in for a surprise.

Still smiling, he clicks on the first link. He’ll try again tomorrow. Try better.  
  


* * *

  
That complete, utter, fucking _asshole._

She turns on her side, and when that doesn’t work, turns on her back. No matter how much she tries to find the ideal position, sleep won’t come, not while she’s still frothing at the mouth.

How stupid. There she was, thinking they actually had a connection, that he liked talking to her when all _he_ was doing was buying her coffee and counting down to the moment he could get into her pants.

Well. He isn’t the first person to pretend to like her, and he sure won’t be the last. She probably let herself think he was different because he’s shy, looks like a giant puppy and plays the pian—

She opens her eyes in the dark of her bedroom and stares at the ceiling. The piano. That’s what she was reminded of! The straight posture, the confidence with which he moved and the way his face lit up. The only time she saw him that comfortable with himself was when he was at the piano, completely in his element.

Maybe that means he felt comfortable talking to her.

She glances at her phone, lying on the low shelf on the left. Will he even bother to listen to her recommendations after she refused to sleep with him? Doubtful.

With a sigh, she grabs her phone and opens her notes app; at the top, there’s a new document titled **Recommendations**. When she opens it, she finds a very neatly organized list, and she scans the titles. Some jazz (pff, she knows jazz!), some rock…

She sits up on her bed after two seconds. What the fuck.

“Little Talks”. “Cathedrals”. “Life in the City”. All songs that _she_ recommended to _him._ And he recommended them to her? How did this happen?!

He also left a comment below each entry, and from a quick glance, their opinions are… pretty similar.

>   * So What (Miles Davis), from his album “Kind of Blue”  
>  [www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXk1LBvIqU  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXk1LBvIqU)This album changed the landscape of jazz, and this piece is a legend. It’s elegantly laid-back, the solos blend into each other seamlessly, and it just sounds like the coolest place on earth.  
>    
> 
>   * Little Talks (Of Monsters and Men), from their album “My Head Is an Animal”  
>  [www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghb6eDopW8I  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghb6eDopW8I)It sounds uncluttered and clean, but also incredibly rich. The vocals and the instruments (especially the accordion and the trumpet, which are fantastic) make it seem lively, but when you listen to the lyrics, it’s really not.  
>    
> 
>   * Come Here (Kath Bloom), from the soundtrack of “Before Sunrise”  
>  [www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDhmnoBVYlQ  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDhmnoBVYlQ)It was love at first listen. It’s devastatingly beautiful and delicately seductive. Vulnerable, but urgent. This is a plea as well as invitation.  
>    
> 
>   * Cathedrals (Jump, Little Children), from their album “Magazine”  
>  [www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAxod5B-rXk  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAxod5B-rXk)I hate that it’s been two full decades, and I still can’t stop listening to this. It’s nostalgic and poignant, and the violin is so fragile (in the best way) I sometimes worry it’s going to break.  
>    
> 
>   * Tonight, Tonight (Smashing Pumpkins), from their album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”  
>  [www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOG3eus4ZSo  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOG3eus4ZSo)The best song in one of the greatest albums of the 90’s. It was recorded with an orchestra because only an orchestra could handle this emotional punch. The melody swirls and rises like an epic, the guitars are unforgettable, and the strings are like a hurricane.  
>    
> 
>   * Life in the City (The Lumineers), from their album “III”  
>  [www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLPsZT2ZAgE  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLPsZT2ZAgE)Albums that tell a complete story are one of my softest spots, so I’m biased, but “Life in the City” is so understated it’s brilliant. The bass pulsates with life, and the snare drums sound like a journey. These are some of my favorite lyrics. This song is a reckoning.  
>    
> 
>   * Merry-Go-Round of Life (Joe Hisaishi), from the soundtrack of “Howl’s Moving Castle”  
>  [www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGetv40FkI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGetv40FkI)  
>  One of my all-time favorite pieces of movie scoring. It begins as a simple waltz, with a kind of brooding piano solo, and becomes so much more when the violins take over. He weaves the piano and the strings into one single voice, and the strings sweep you off your feet.  
>    
> 
>   * A Case of You (Joni Mitchell), from her album “Blue”  
>  [www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YuaZcylk_o  
>  ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YuaZcylk_o)“Blue” is the single most gorgeous album in the entire history of rock ‘n roll, but if you listen to nothing else, listen to this. The lyrics are so honest they’re naked, and her voice is unparalleled. She soars when she hits her falsetto, it’s smooth, effortless, fearless, ahead of everyone else. It’s like you playing the violin, like she’s already flying before you even realize she has wings.
> 


Rey feels her heart cave in on itself as she reads the last sentence.

This is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to her. (Well, written, technically.) Does he really mean that?

For all that she’s positively furious at the end he inflicted on an otherwise perfect night, she has to admit that ‘liar’ is not one of the adjectives she’d add to his list. Not with those eyes that hide little and that very anemic attempt at convincing her he only knows ‘the basics’ of violin. No, ‘blunt’ still rings true; ‘disastrously honest’ might be more accurate.

So the question is, what’s she going to do about it?

With a huff, she grabs her headphones from the shelf. There’ll be no sleeping until she listens to each song listed on there, so she might as well get started. Clicking on the link to “A Case of You,” she closes her eyes.

No use focusing on a question she already knows the answer to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to think that, no matter the universe, no matter the context, Ben has a "join me" moment that 100% does not work. He's a dumbass, your honor.
> 
> Yes, the youtube links will take you straight to the songs in question, so if there's any you don't know, give it a try! And on that note, I've updated [the Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1RqwR4RUvHeQTaysBcN6S7).
> 
> Thank you to [Rae](https://twitter.com/regardingluv) for the beta! ♥
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr](http://thehobbem.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thehobbem). Come for the reylo and Star Wars (and the TROS wank), stay for the endless thirst for Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac (who was looking d e l i c i o u s in that pic from Dune). I also have a [Pride & Prejudice/AITA AU text fic on Twitter](https://twitter.com/thehobbem/status/1228487438542286849), in case that kind of thing rocks your boat.
> 
> P.S.: Don't @ me, I'm crazy about Adele.


	4. moods that take me and erase me

On Tuesday, Ben closes the store at 7 PM, as usual.

He hesitates with his hand on the doorknob for a second before breaking his routine and going upstairs, straight to his bedroom. The room is almost too small for him, with the massive mahogany wardrobe and the window that opens to the back of another building — but after fifteen years, he’s used to how cramped it is. The old bed creaks under him as he throws himself on it, and he orders a pizza for dinner on his phone.

While waiting, he fumbles around his newly-downloaded Spotify app until he more or less gets the hang of it, and the pizza hasn’t even arrived yet before he signs up for the premium account with an annoyed sigh — what kind of heathen listens to music with ads in the middle?! Whoever thought of this business model is an unscrupulous genius. Is this app supposed to replace iPods or something? Because this shit is vastly inferior.

He spends the rest of the night in the kitchen, eating the pizza straight out of the box as it sits on the lime green table, and explores Spotify; it’s only a matter of time before the low hum of the refrigerator is subdued by Billie Eilish’s _When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?_.

Ben wonders if Rey's ever thought of playing Billie's “8.” Maybe she's playing it right now down the street, and he'll never know.

On Wednesday, he doesn’t even hesitate by the front door; he turns the key on the lock, flips the sign to ‘closed’ and heads upstairs. He makes a few sandwiches in the kitchen while Fall Out Boy’s _Mania_ blasts from his phone. He’s not totally sure he gets, or ever has gotten, Fall Out Boy, but he has to agree with her: “The Last of the Real Ones” really _is_ a banger. Assuming he understands the term right.

He does his best not to look at the time and wonder how far she is into her set. He loses count of how many times he fails.

Thursday, and he eats tacos leftover from lunch; he leans against the kitchen sink instead of bothering with the uncomfortable wooden chairs and listens to Hozier’s _Wasteland, Baby!_. She called it ‘a revolution’, and damn was she right.

The tricky part will be saying that to her face.

It’s easy to decide, in the comfort of his apartment, to try and talk to her again. Not so easy to pick himself up and dust off his own stupidity, let alone hope for an outcome where she doesn’t tell him to go to hell. To hope she’ll have decided that he may be an ass, but he’s still worth having around. No one’s ever come to that conclusion, least of all himself, so what are the odds that she would?

_“Kid, never think about the odds.”_

Those words always come back to Ben when he needs them the least. Or the most.

“Yeah, easy for you to say, Dad,” he mumbles. Boundless, perfectly unjustified confidence: just another Solo trait he did not inherit. 

Washing the grease from his hands, he glances at the clock on the wall, a garish thing in the shape of a sunflower that was already there (along with everything else) when he moved in, and which he never bothered to put away: 7:30 PM.

Rey should be halfway through her set already. He doesn’t know what she’s playing now, or the expressions moving over her face. Maybe she’s closing her eyes with a light smile that she’s completely unaware of, or scrunching up her nose as she hits a sharper note, all of which comes together to form a picture more adorable than his mental health can take.

He doesn’t know, and it’s the only thing that feels like he should know.

The sound of Luke’s sigh, as well as the exhaustion in his words, still feels like a fresh memory, even after all these years. _“You have so much of your father in you. You’re just as stubborn, you know that?”_

“You bet your ass I am,” he mutters. He shoves his phone into his pocket and, grabbing the first jacket he sees hanging by the door, Ben rushes downstairs. He might not know what to say to her yet, but not seeing her is no longer an option.

The front door shuts behind him with a slam.  
  


* * *

  
Rey smiles at the small audience clapping; “Thinking Out Loud” really brought people to a stop (and also brought some money into her case). Good old Sheeran, always reliable crowd bait.

Before she knows it, she finds herself wondering if Ben knows who Ed Sheeran is.

Maybe it’s better if he doesn’t. He’d probably hate “Shape of You” (and God forbid he ever listen to “I Don’t Care”, that unholy creation).

Only one more song to go, and Ben hasn’t shown up. That makes it three days in a row. 

Well, and why should she care? She shouldn’t have any sort of expectation in the first place, because this, right here, is what happens when you do: you’re left with nothing but fragments of could’ve beens. She keeps doing that, like the moron she is, keeps swapping one exercise in futility for another, and Ben Solo is simply the newest one; there was no reason to expect him to come back just because they have a few things in common. Her own parents didn’t come back for her, and they had whole DNA segments in common. Life is not made of staying, much less of going back.

Sometimes she feels like life is a waltz made of one, two, threes, where people spin you around for a few minutes before switching partners, and she’s the only one waiting on the dance floor long after the band has gone home and all the lights have been turned off.

With a small bow, Rey throws out her next bait for the audience, a “Blank Space” mashup that will hopefully keep the money coming.

And perhaps this is all there is to it: offering up the little you got in the hope they’ll stay just a little longer. Just five more minutes. Three. One, even. On a good day, she swears she’s made her peace with that, with the knowledge that people will always walk away in the end.

But there are other days. Days when she rambles on about a new arrangement she came up with, or about how America will never truly _get_ Ellie Goulding, or how Skywalker’s cover dramatically improved “The Phantom of the Opera,” which is such an overrated song to begin with, but it’s such an _unpopular_ opinion — and all she gets from Rose is a blank stare, because Rose is a great friend and listens to Rey very patiently, but doesn’t understand the first thing about music. Days when she texts Finn and doesn’t hear back from him for hours, because he and Poe have a life of their own. Days that remind her everyone she loves also exists out of her reach.

 _But I’ve got a blank space, baby_  
 _When the night has come_ _  
__And the land is dark_

Just as there are parts of her that don’t exist within anyone’s reach — pieces of her no one really knows.

Where do all these bits and pieces go, then?

 _No, I won’t be afraid_ _  
__Just as long as you stand, stand by me_

She raises her eyes to gauge her audience’s reaction, and her heart jolts: Ben Solo.

Ben is standing behind everyone, watching her once again.

 _So darling, darling, stand by me_ _  
__Oh, stand by me_

She avoids looking at him, but becomes hyper aware of him anyway; of his presence, and of her heart pounding way more vigorously than necessary.

 _Oh stand, stand by me, stand by me_ _  
__Cause I’ve got a blank space, baby_ _  
__And I’ll write your name._

When the last note’s been played, effectively finishing tonight’s set, there are around ten people scattered across the sidewalk applauding her, and she hears a “yeah!” and even a “woohoo.” It _is_ a good mashup, if she does say so herself; no one ever expects “Stand by Me” to come on the coattails of “Blank Space,” and the surprised gasps are always the best part. Even the employees of the Goodwill store and that stuck-up Ana from the Irish pub have come out to listen, and the number of coins and bills being dropped into her case is as solid praise as it gets.

As the audience slowly disperses, she kneels down to disconnect her equipment and put it away, all the while doing her best impression of someone who’s going to be surprised to see him. "Oh, hi, I didn't see you there!" Like it’s believable not to see a 6-foot man with fabulous hair who’s staring straight at you.

When everything is safely tucked away in her case and she can’t pretend there’s anything else left to do, she finally looks up at the last person still standing there — and well, shit.

Ben’s still hot.

What is he even that hot for? Can’t he just… wax off his eyebrows or something? Give himself some flaw so she can stop drooling? Except that no, that wouldn't work because he’d _still_ be hot, and she'd just be drooling over a man without eyebrows, and no one wants that on their conscience.

She’s tried to convince herself during the week that she was misremembering, that she hadn't gotten laid in so long her brain was falling victim to some sort of ‘Benflation’. That if she saw him again, he absolutely wouldn’t live up to her feverish imagination.

As it turns out, her brain hates her, and kept every single detail about him engraved in her memory, because that’s just how hot he is. Or how desperate she is. She remembered, with frightening precision, how his leather jacket hugs his shoulders and arms perfectly; remembered his long legs and the soft-looking hair he keeps trying to sweep back, only for that lonely, stubborn lock to come loose all over again.

She remembered, with inconvenient clarity, the scorching stare that both alarms her and draws her in.

She swallows back a sigh, unable to say what the sigh is even for — maybe Ben, who gave her hope for one night, only to ruin it. Maybe herself, for even hoping in the first place.

They look at each other for a handful of seconds before Ben gives her one of his brief waves.

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

She notices he’s got two cups in his hands, and he holds one out for her.

“This is for you,” he says; it’s the same caramel frappuccino she had on Monday. The same size, too, and oh boy could she use it right now.

Rey crosses her arms. “What happens if I take it?”

Ben stares at her. “You drink it,” he answers slowly, as if he has sudden doubts about her comprehension skills.

She looks up. God, grant her patience. “Yes, I know what it’s _for._ But what’s the catch? What do you want from me?”

Surprised understanding dawns on his face. “No, no strings attached. You can take it and go home, or… I don’t know, you can take it and tell me to go to hell, which is fair, or you can…” He clears his throat almost painfully, “you can hear me apologize. But it’s yours anyway.”

When she doesn’t move, he shakes the cup in her direction. There’s a hint of impatience in the gesture, but he still speaks with unexpected gentleness. “Can you just… please, just take it.”

She does. As if she wouldn’t. “You know you can’t buy forgiveness, right?” she says, examining the cup. There’s extra cream in it, just like she ordered that night. Someone paid attention.

A humorless huff. “Trust me, I’m well aware.”

Rey takes a long, drawn out sip before giving a partial verdict. “Fine. You can apologize, and then I’ll decide if I’ll tell you to go to hell or not.”

The relief on his face is palpable; after finishing his own coffee the way one would chug a drink at the bar, he throws away his cup in the nearby trash can and turns to her. How, how is a guy a whole head taller looking _up_ at her? How does he keep doing that?

He takes a deep breath. “I fucked up. I’m not…” He pauses. “This?” He makes a gesture between them. “I’m not good at this.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Flirting?”

“People.”

She fails to contain a snort. “That was obvious from the start.”

His lips curve up in the suggestion of a smile. “Really? What gave it away,” he deadpans. “Look, what I _wanted_ that day was to keep seeing you. But what came out was _that,_ because… well, because you’re gorgeous and I’m lonely and I’m an ass. And I’m sorry.”

This is… much better than she’d dared to hope for. She’d half-expected something long-winded and defensive about ‘misreading her signs,’ subtly implying she had a share of the blame by sending him ‘mixed signals.’ Something that partially excused the presumptuousness of assuming she’d sleep with him. But ‘lonely and an ass’ is not that.

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Ben exhales slowly and heavily through his nose, looking at her with such focus Rey can practically hear him thinking.

“And I would like to try again. If you’ll let me.”

If she’s being honest with herself, Rey will admit that there are few things she wants as much as to let him try again. She wanted it before, while reading and rereading his words on her phone and listening to his music; she wanted it because the only thing swirling around in her heart as she tried to sleep was the single sentence _“like you playing the violin, like she’s already flying before you even realize she has wings.”_

She wants it even more now that he came back for her.

“Okay,” she says.

He freezes. “Okay what?”

“Okay, apology accepted.”

With the slow nod of someone still processing, he echoes her. “Okay.”

“And you’re carrying my case on the way,” she adds, and that finally thaws a smile out of him. Not a full one, just a lopsided thing that is way more charming than it should be.

Without a word of protest, Ben holds out his hand for the case. He slings it over his shoulder with unspeakable ease, like it weighs the same as a bunch of grapes, and gives her an amused side look.

“Tell me you’re not forgiving me just so you can use me as your personal carrier.”

She winks. “You’ll never know.”

♪♫♬  
  


“No,” he shakes his head. “No way. No way! There are too many, how can I choose?!”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s the game. You have to choose.”

“What the hell kind of game...?!”

“Stop whining and choose already!”

Ben sighs loudly and dramatically. “Okay, _fine,_ gun to my head, as you’re so obviously doing, I would have to choose… the outro.”

“Really? Huh,” she takes another sip of her frappuccino before passing judgement. “Interesting, but wrong.”

“Wro— what are you— okay, first of all, this is not a quiz, it's a personal opinion, so how can it be wrong?,” says Ben, looking downright offended. “Secondly, the outro is clearly the best part, objectively speaking. I mean, that _tempo change._ You think the song’s over and then there’s Billie's creepy laugh and the tempo is just completely different?! It comes and shakes you up just as you’re getting comfortable, it’s sensational, how can it be a wrong answer?” he demands. His hands move emphatically as he talks, conducting entire orchestras of thoughts, and Rey watches it with held breath.

How is it possible for someone to be so... much?

It’s one thing for him to be criminally attractive, with that expanse of chest she wouldn’t mind making a pillow out of, and lips so tantalizing the only word she can associate with them is ‘sultry’, which is absolutely ridiculous. But that would be fine, if it weren’t for how he comes alive when he actually _talks._

All it’d taken was a couple of minutes of them walking together for the constraints tying him up to snap, one by one, and let him go. His whole body moves loosely, easily, his face livens up with a thousand little expressions; let him forget himself a little and it’s like a mask falls off, one that, unless she’s very much mistaken, seems self-imposed. And there’s just so much happening under it.

“...Right?”

Rey blinks. Crap, she has no idea what he just said.

“Yeah, fair enough,” is the best neutral reply she can come up with.

They walk in silence for a few moments, with Ben downing a second large cup of coffee he bought on their way. Rey’s mildly concerned “Are you even going to be able to sleep after that much caffeine?” only gets a soft snort from him, which says enough about his caffeine habits.

Eventually, he asks her in a low voice, “Do you ever think about doing something with it?”

She looks at him with arched eyebrows. Whatever train of thought he took to get to that question, it’s certainly left her behind at the station. The only thing she can do is calmly sip more of her frappuccino, and he eventually looks back and realizes she’s waiting for more. His lips twitch into a faint smile.

“What, you don’t immediately know what I mean when I say something out of the blue? I thought we were on the same page here.”

“I know I’m awesome,” she says, with the barefaced confidence she’s learned to fake along the years, “but I don’t _quite_ have telepathy yet.”

“I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.” He’s still trying, and for the most part succeeding, to keep his smile contained, and Rey doesn’t have the vaguest idea why he does that; it’s like he doesn’t know the number of things he could accomplish with that smile alone.

“But I meant your music,” he explains. “Have you ever thought of making a living out of it?”

She takes her fluffy coin purse out of her pocket and shakes it till they hear the coins clashing against each other. “You _don’t_ call making ten to fifteen bucks a day ‘making a living’? I’m shocked.”

Ben’s only answer is to roll his eyes, which is pretty much the right reaction.

“Yeah, of course I do, it’s just…” She doesn’t continue right away. She’s never confessed it to Finn, or Rose, or anyone else for that matter; it should feel nonsensical to tell Ben Solo, of all people.

But… where do these bits and pieces of her go, then?

She turns her eyes up at him, and as if reading her mind, he nods, waiting.

“I don’t know how. I have literally no idea how to do that.” There, she said it. She said it, and another bit of her is out in the world now. What Ben will do with it is anybody’s guess.

His first step, apparently, is to give it careful consideration. “Hmm. I assume you don’t want to be in an orchestra or a string ensemble?”

She gives him a smile too bitter to deserve the name. “Right, because what any orchestra or ensemble wants is a violinist with a collapsed wrist and no formal education.”

To her surprise, Ben sniffs. “They should be so lucky. But no, they wouldn’t take you with that wrist. Or with your feet.”

“What about my feet?!”

“You keep turning them out, it’s infuriating,” he says, pursing his lips in clear annoyance, and Rey has to literally bite her lips not to laugh. Good God, what a snob. “But… do you _want_ them to want you?” he asks, brow knitting in confusion, and she doesn’t blame him. Nothing sounds less like her than an orchestra.

She shakes her head. “Nope. Don’t see myself in one. It’s so… I mean, I wouldn’t be doing what _I_ want or everything _I_ can. I would just be…” She trails off. If only there were a way to put that thought into words that don’t sound too stupid.

“Reproducing what others did before,” Ben finishes the thought for her. “You wouldn’t be doing you.” He says it with the calm assurance of someone who knows exactly what Rey’s talking about and sees nothing wrong with it. .

The wave of relief washing over her is so strong that she’s afraid he can see it in her eyes as she looks back at him. Sometimes she thinks he sees way too much. Is this what it’s like to come into focus? To come within someone’s reach?

“You could make your own music,” he says. “Something new, fresh. Move forward. This is where music should always go. Being stuck in the past is useless.”

Make her own music. Somehow, that’s the easy part, for all the good it does her. She thinks of the drawer at home with pages and pages of sheet music that haven’t seen the light of day in a year, at the very least. With a dry laugh, she chucks her now empty cup into a trash can.

“You’re forgetting a very important detail: no one wants to hear original music from a nobody.”

“And… are you?”

Her eyes widen at him. “What?”

“A nobody. Is that what you are?” he asks her — or at least she thinks he does. While the structure is that of a question, the tone is anything but.

Rey looks into his eyes, defiant. “Aren’t I?”

How does he manage to make a slight shrug brim with impertinence?

“If you say so,” he says.

She has no answer to that.  
  


♪♫♬

 **  
Luke Skywalker** **  
**4,632,218 listeners

FOLLOWING

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**𝅘𝅥𝅮 Theme from Schindler’s List  
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 **Albums** **  
**Luke Skywalker plays Paganini  
Alliance  
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons & Violin Concertos  
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Already under the covers, face bathed in the bright screen light from her phone, Rey stares at Skywalker’s Spotify page as if for the first time, and not the hundredth (a conservative estimate). The list of albums goes on for a few more rows, but she knows well enough which one she wants, and she taps on **Play**.

 _Alliance._ Skywalker’s only original album, and also his last. After 2005, he released no more new music or performance albums, nor did he perform in public ever again, completely disappearing from the public eye. Rumor has it he doesn’t even give interviews.

All those years spent exclusively playing the greatest names of the past — Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Bach — only to disappear after putting out his own work, new music that he could’ve been playing long before.

_“Reproducing what others did before. You wouldn’t be doing you.”_

She jumps out of bed, abandoning her phone and headphones without even bothering to hit pause. In less than a minute she’s back with her violin and yellow, dusty sheet music she dug out of a drawer; throwing her pink woolen covers aside, she makes a small mound with them and props the music against it, sits in lotus position, and grabs her violin.

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

She lowers the violin: this is stupid. This is so stupid, why would she even think he would like to listen to this? What makes her think this is a good idea?

She thinks that because… he came back.

_“A nobody. Is that what you are?”_

When was the last time she took a leap of faith? Or even a tiny skip?

She knows what she wants to do, knows the next steps. It’s time to take them.

“Okay. I can do this. I can do this.” With another deep breath and a roll of her shoulders, she positions her violin again and taps on **RECORD**.

  
♪♫♬  
  


> **  
> Me at 1:54 AM**
> 
> Hey!
> 
> Listen i know you’re probably sleeping but I’m sending you smthg
> 
> **Ben Solo at 1:54 AM**
> 
> Hi.
> 
> **Me at 1:54 AM**
> 
> Omg what are you doing awake???
> 
> **Ben Solo at 1:55 AM**
> 
> I could ask you the same question.
> 
> **Me at 1:55 AM**
> 
> Yes but you have work tomorrow morning!
> 
> **Ben Solo at 1:55 AM**
> 
> So do you.
> 
> And my job is literally downstairs. I fall out of bed and I’m there.
> 
> **Me at 1:56 AM**
> 
> Lol true
> 
> But mine isn’t far it’s that garage on Somerville ave
> 
> **Ben Solo at 1:57 AM**
> 
> Wait. You work at Plutt’s?
> 
> **Me at 1:57 AM**
> 
> You know it???
> 
> **Ben Solo at 1:57 AM**
> 
> Yeah, I take my motorcycle there for regular maintenance.
> 
> **Me at 1:57 AM**
> 
> Alsjdvhals omg!!!
> 
> I’ve ever seen you there!!
> 
> *never
> 
> Whose your guy??
> 
> **Ben Solo at 1:58 AM**
> 
> You ask difficult questions.
> 
> Some blond guy with a French name.
> 
> **Me at 1:58 AM**
> 
> Ugh, fucking Beaumont
> 
> He can’t tell his arse from his elbow
> 
> **Ben Solo at 1:58 AM**
> 
> Your British is showing.
> 
> And yes, that does sound like him.
> 
> **Me at 1:58 AM**
> 
> Tell you what
> 
> Next time ho in the morning
> 
> *go
> 
> I’m there from 8 to 6!
> 
> **Ben Solo at 1:59 AM**
> 
> For the love of God, yes.
> 
> French guy is annoying.
> 
> He keeps stating the obvious, I’m not made for this kind of small talk.
> 
> **Me at 1:59 AM**
> 
> Yep DEFINITELY beaumont
> 
> What bike btw???
> 
> **Ben Solo at 1:59 AM**
> 
> A Suzuki GSX-R1000.
> 
> **Me at 1:59 AM**
> 
> That’s a good one!
> 
> **Ben Solo at 1:59 AM**
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> **Me at 2:00 AM**
> 
> That’s not a compliment to you 😂
> 
> **Ben Solo at 2:00 AM**
> 
> It is. I chose the bike.
> 
> What you’re actually saying is that I have good judgement and impeccable taste.
> 
> **Me at 2:00 AM**
> 
> 🙄🙄🙄
> 
> **Ben Solo at 2:00 AM**
> 
> And you can’t even disagree, because I like you as well, which only proves my point.

The phone drops on the bed as Rey buries her face in her arms with a sound that comes as close as humanly possible to the “alsjdvhals” she typed not three minutes ago.

Ben Solo is _such_ an asshole. Good thing they’re not having this conversation face to face, because there is absolutely no way she would be able to hide a smile this large.

> **Ben Solo at 2:01 AM**
> 
> You said you were sending me something?
> 
> **Me at 2:02 AM**
> 
> Yes i am!!
> 
> I recorded it now and I want you to give it a listen
> 
> It’s mine
> 
> As in i wrote it
> 
> I don’t mean i wrote it NOW obvs
> 
> I’m not a genius liek you
> 
> I wrote it a lnog time ago
> 
> **Ben Solo at 2:03 AM**
> 
> That’s very flattering, but I’m not a genius.

_Shit._

_Brilliant, let him know you Googled him like a stalker. Dumbass._

> **Ben Solo at 2:03 AM**
> 
> And yes, of course I’ll listen.
> 
> I can’t wait.

She… chooses to believe that, despite the complete lack of enthusiasm contained in his precise, dry punctuation. Ben texts like a reasonably tech-proficient boomer which, somehow, does not surprise her in the least.

> **Me at 2:04 AM**
> 
> Okay sending now!
> 
> _File: Sunset_
> 
> **Ben Solo at 2:04 AM**
> 
> I’ll text you about it during lunch time, if that’s okay?
> 
> **Me at 2:04 AM**
> 
> You can txt me at any time dw!
> 
> I can’t promise I’ll answer right away, but you can txt
> 
> **Ben Solo at 2:05 AM**
> 
> Will do, then.
> 
> But please go to bed, you have to be up in less than 6 hours.
> 
> **Me at 2:05 AM**
> 
> Fine 🙄
> 
> Night!
> 
> **Ben Solo at 2:05 AM**
> 
> Sleep well.

  
♪♫♬

> **  
> Ben Solo at 4:32 AM**
> 
> You should know this is sensational, and we need to talk about it.
> 
> I mean your piece. It’s incredible.
> 
> I wanna hear everything you have to say about it.
> 
> Also, I really hope you’re sleeping right now.
> 
> Am I waking you up with these?
> 
> Shit I’m so sorry if I am.
> 
> **Me at 7:59 AM**
> 
> Hey!
> 
> Dw I turn off the internet when i sleep!
> 
> What were YOU doing up at 4:30??? 😲
> 
> **Ben Solo at 8:46 AM**
> 
> Playing.

Rey stares at the message. What on earth could he have been playing until 4:30 in the morning?

“Miss Johnson,” Plutt’s voice booms from the other side of the garage, “if you would be _so kind_ as to get off your _phone_ from a second, Mrs. Cohen would like your assistance with her car!”

She rolls her eyes. Ironic civility doesn’t suit Plutt (“the Blobfish,” as she and Rose call him behind his back) at all. The only thing he manages to accomplish with that is to sound like a complete prick.

Then again, you can only sound like the kind of person you are, so.

Exchanging glances with Rose (Rey’s says something along the lines of “fucking wanker,” and Rose’s hits the notes of “jackass”), she returns her phone to her bag and gets up, walking to the front of the shop with the best winning smile she has in her arsenal. It’s not even nine o’clock yet, better keep her exasperation levels to a minimum and spread them evenly throughout the day.

Almost nine. That means there are only nine more hours till she sees Ben again; nine more hours till she takes that skip of faith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Sorry about the delay, just been _overwhelmed_ with work these past few weeks. Another reason was that this chapter was actually so long that it reached 10K, and then I realized I should probably split it in half XD. So the good news is that the next chapter is 99.9% ready, and I'll post it next week (instead of making you guys wait 2 weeks), to make up to you. ^^
> 
> Fun fact: there really is a [Blank Spaces/Stand by Me mashup by the Imagine Dragons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFX8VJUtDgY). Here is a string of words I never thought I'd type XD It's actually super cool! You can also find it on Spotify.
> 
> Thank you to my doppelganger [aes](https://twitter.com/aeslis) and my beautiful [rae](https://twitter.com/regardingluv) for the beta! ♥
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr](http://thehobbem.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thehobbem). It's all Star Wars, reylo, and that unacceptable monstrosity Adam Driver. ♥♥♥


	5. and I'm painted black

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slight bump in the number of chapters 👀

Head landing against the bus window with a forlorn _thump,_ Rey watches the bus splash its way through the unexpected evening rain.

It’s Friday. _Friday._ The single most profitable busking day completely down the drain. There goes twenty bucks she won’t see again. At least it gives her more time for today’s mission, and God knows she could use all of it; her heart pummels up a storm just at the thought of what she’s about to do, and every minute the bus advances is a minute she considers going home instead. What if he flat-out says no?!

But. Tiny skips.

It’s a short trip from Plutt’s to the store, one that she would’ve been happy to make on foot, but without an umbrella and only a pair of tattered Converse on her feet, shelling out the $1.70 seemed like a wiser choice — even if the plastic seats are far from inviting on her buttocks. Even the few meters between the bus stop and the front door of First Order are enough to soak her through the bone and turn her feet into cold, sloshing messes inside her shoes.

When she walks in, there’s no Ben around; manning the counter instead are a skinny red headed dude with a beard and a woman with short blonde hair who is probably the single most handsome woman Rey’s ever seen (and good _God,_ is she taller than Ben?!). The absence of Ben is made even more glaring by the sound of Maroon 5 coming through the speakers, because there’s no way in hell he would listen to that garbage. 

The redhead merely throws her a haughty glance before turning back to his own phone, and it’s the blonde woman who leans on the counter with a “Hi, can I help you?” She doesn’t outright smile, but there’s such an air of approachable competence to her that convinces Rey the woman is In Charge, capitals and all. If it turns out she’s also in charge of both the redhead and Ben, Rey won’t be at all shocked.

“Hi! Is Ben around?”

At that, the haughty ginger looks up with wide eyes, and the woman stares at her. As if in answer to her question, Rey hears the sound of piano coming from the other room.

“Ben? Ben Solo?” the woman asks, sounding incredulous.

“Yeah!”

Haughty Ginger gets up and leans on the counter as well, looking at Rey like she’s a unicorn. “Dark-haired, broody guy with a long nose? _That_ Ben Solo?”

“Um…” Not exactly the words she’d choose, but the description still rings comically true. “Yeah. Is he… here?” 

The woman and Ginger exchange puzzled looks.

“Huh. Someone wants to see Solo. A Christmas miracle in April, who’da thought,” says Haughty Ginger, eyebrows raised so high they almost become one with his hairline.

Blonde Lady slaps him on the arm and turns to Rey. “Are you… a friend?” she asks, and she does a half-decent job of hiding her incredulity.

Rey tries not to smile. “I like to think so, yeah. Is that him at the piano?” The woman nods. “I’ll go talk to him, then, thank you!” She quickly squelches towards the piano room, grimacing as she realizes she’s leaving wet footprints all over the store.  
  


* * *

**Ten minutes earlier**

_Take me to church_ _  
__I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies_ _  
__I’ll tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife_ _  
__Offer me that deathless death_ _  
__Good God, let me give you my life_

Leaning back in his chair in front of the computer, his back turned to the rest of the store, Ben’s fingers have long stopped moving across the computer keyboard, moving on invisible piano keys on the table instead.

The sales report of the day remains open and neglected on the screen as he presses the rewind button on “Take Me To Church” for what’s probably the sixth time in a row (he does not understand why this app doesn't let him just repeat songs. Or maybe it does, but he's sure not going to ask Hux how it's done); between the powerful vocals, the notes that sound sacred and lyrics that are almost sacrilegious, this shit’s sensational, it’s one of the best things he’s heard in the past y— 

A thunderclap suddenly intrudes and drowns out the song. Startled, Ben takes off his headphones, only for his ears to be filled with the sound of rain aggressively battering against the windows. Outside, it’s an ocean of umbrellas hurrying by.

“What the fuck, it’s raining?”

“It’s been raining for half an hour, moron,” says Hux; his nose is buried so far into his phone he looks like one of those phone-obsessed teenage girls that used to decorate their cases with rhinestones and those dangly charm things when Ben was still in school. And much like those charms, Hux has never served any real purpose, as far as Ben’s concerned.

He doesn’t have to look to know Hux’s on Twitter again, giving his unsolicited opinions to the entirety of the internet.

Good. Means Ben doesn’t have to hear them.

“Sorry, I was busy not listening to your horrible music choices,” he replies, turning his eyes back to the windows. He can let the ‘moron’ bit slide, but his Maroon 5 playlist is beyond redemption.

But fuck, he won’t see Rey tonight, then — not even she is crazy enough to try to busk in this rain, which he’s actually thankful for. The image of her busking through a coughing fit still grates on his nerves. Still, it means he doesn’t get to see her today. “Great, of all days to rain,” he grumbles.

Changing violins around on the display, mostly just so she has something to pass the time, Phasma looks over her shoulder. “You live upstairs, what difference does it make?”

“I had somewhere to go,” he says, and his mind adds, _and someone to talk to._ The thought comes as a small surprise: he has someone to talk to. At least he thinks he does. When was the last time that happened?

Hux sneers. _“You_ had somewhere to go? Please.”

“Ben, don’t answer that, and pass me the Yamaha V3,” Phasma tells him, and Ben dutifully obeys. He’s acutely aware that, if it weren’t for Phasma’s complete intolerance to nonsense, he would’ve gladly made a weekly habit out of punching Hux, starting ten years ago. A shame. Such a waste of a perfectly punchable face.

With twenty minutes to go before closing the store, everything else in order, and the rain reducing the odds of a last minute client to practically zero, the three of them have very little to do. And since he’s not seeing Rey today, he might as well do something better with his time than sitting next to goddamn Hux.

“Phas, call if you need me,” he says, leaving the counter area and heading towards the piano room. Phasma hums, most of her attention on the violin display, but Hux has an unsolicited opinion, as usual:

“We’re still on the clock, Solo.”

Already halfway down the short hallway, Ben takes a few steps back and pokes his head into the room again.

“Yeah? Then get off fucking Twitter.”

Once he settles down at the piano, the frustration with the weather and the image of Hux’s obnoxious face dim away, slowly replaced by the memory of one of the songs he’s been practicing in his spare time. His hands move towards the keys on autopilot, producing the first simple, eerie notes that, he feels, wouldn’t be out of place in a _Halloween_ movie.

Not knowing the lyrics yet, he’s content to only play it. Sometimes the melody is all the lyrics you need.

 _I'm bigger than my body_ _  
__I'm colder than this home_ _  
__I'm meaner than my demons_ _  
__I'm bigger than these bones_

 _“It’s a musical story, and it’s real,”_ is what she wrote. As note after note flows around the room, Ben wonders how real the story gets for her.

Only an assumption at first, back when he called her ‘the girl with violin’ and it didn’t matter, it has since turned into certainty: she knows what it’s like. Everything that haunts him, the loathing that grips at the edges of his sanity at night and the jagged emptiness that comes before sleep — she feels them too. And much like him, she tries to exorcise it through notes and chords.

But there’s only so much notes and chords can do when you have to live with yourself.

He should know. No matter how much he plays, how many songs he practices and tries to drown in, he’s still himself — still someone who lashed out, who ran away and hid. Someone who’s the only reason his dad’s dead in the first place. 

_And I couldn't stand the person inside me_ _  
__I turned all the mirrors around_

Someone who no one would— 

_“ACHOO!”_

Ben jumps on his seat and swivels around. His eyes widen: Rey.

Rey is here, standing at the threshold.

She gives him a cheery wave with her right hand, while she wipes her nose on the left sleeve of a sweater that, between the faded colors and the frayed hem, has frankly seen better days.

As a matter of fact, all of Rey seems to have seen better days: she’s drenched, from head to toe.

“Rey! What are you— ? Jesus, you’re soaking wet!” He goes to her, and his first instinct is to pat her arms and shoulders to check if she’s as wet as she looks — but he stops himself at the last second, and the aborted gesture hangs between them for a moment before he lets his hands fall.

“No umbrella, huh?” he asks, and immediately wants to kick himself for it, because _obviously_ no umbrella.

She shakes her head, and gives him a smile that looks much more practiced than spontaneous; like she knows what her smiles are supposed to look like, and is giving him a rehearsed one. He hates it on sight.

How often has she needed to hide behind it for it to be this ready-made?

“That’s fine! It’ll dry soon!” she says.

Ben doesn’t even know how to respond. Putting on a brave face is one thing, but this pushes past bravery and into the territory of the insane. She looks like she couldn’t possibly dry on her own within the next five hours.

His astonished silence seems to be loud enough, because she backtracks. “Well. Maybe not… _soon,_ soon. But I wanted to talk to you, so…” She points at her clothes and shrugs, as if to say she had no choice.

Except she did. She could’ve gone home, where she’d be able to take a hot shower and get into dry clothes. Instead, she came to see Ben.

It takes a long moment for his brain to stop itself from short-circuiting and finally offer something he can use.

“You need dry clothes. I’ll bring you some, hold on,” he says, and he’s already out the door when she replies with a small laugh.

“Ben! Do you really think _your_ clothes are going to fit _me?”_

He stops for a brief second, drinking in the sight of her, and wondering if she even has the slightest idea. If she knows how adorable she looks with that wrinkled nose, or that she could light an entire state through a power outage with the way she’s beaming. That there’s very little he wouldn’t do to bring a smile to her lips again and again.

“I think it would be much harder the other way around,” he says, which gets him another laugh. “Be right back.”

Finally a time when having long legs that allow him to take the stairs three steps at a time will be useful. He practically ransacks his wardrobe in search of clothes that are 1. comfortable and warm, 2. Rey-appropriate, 3. clean, 4. not embarrassingly wrinkled. That last condition makes the task much harder than he anticipated; he doesn’t think he’s ever owned an iron in his life. 

When he returns five minutes later, he brings her a towel, a t-shirt, a dark hoodie, a pair of bright red woolen socks he’s never worn (Hux’s “funny” birthday present to him last November), and a pair of black sweatpants that Rey can maybe wear if she pulls the drawstrings really tight, and then ties them a thousand times. Maybe.

“Here. You can change in the restroom on the right,” he says, pointing a thumb in that direction. 

Rey looks at the set of dry clothes almost hungrily, but still hesitates. “Ben, are you sure? You’ll have to wash these later,” she says, and he resists the impulse to roll his eyes. The old dance of declining-a-favor-at-first-only-to-accept-it-when-the-person-insists is something he’s never seen the point of, nor has ever had the patience for.

Instead, he arches his eyebrows. “You know I have to do the laundry either way, right? Like. Every week.”

Sticking out her tongue at him, she takes the clothes with a quiet “thank you” and hurries to change, leaving Ben all alone with his own thoughts; not that he has many of them at this moment in time. Namely, he has one: that Rey is currently undressing herself a mere six feet away from him.

He crosses his arms and looks around the room, eyes landing on the piano. Yeah, that’s not going to happen now. He uncrosses his arms and shoves his hands in his pockets. Takes them out. Runs a hand through his hair before pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes until he sees stars.

_Jesus fucking Christ._

Leaving the room with more desperation than he should, he goes back to the front of the store in time to see his coworkers leaving. After Phas reminds him to finish the sales report of the day, and Hux gives him shit (“Keep it PG-13 in here, Solo, it’s our place of work.” “Fuck off, Hux.”), they close the door after themselves, and Ben has never flipped that sign to ‘closed’ faster.

He gets to the piano room in three long strides, but once there he realizes his mistake: Rey is sitting on the piano bench, legs crossed over each other, wearing his clothes and looking like a snug, tiny ball of soft, black fabrics (with the exception of the splotch of vivid red on her feet), with her hair falling in damp waves on her shoulders; he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her with her hair completely loose, and it’s all really, really bad for his health. He’s pretty sure hearts aren’t supposed to lurch like his is doing right now, but this is what his life has become over this last week: being dangerously close to cardiac arrest when Rey smiles at him.

The fact that she looks this beautiful in _his_ clothes does nothing to help his heart condition.

When she waves, her hand is nowhere to be seen, completely engulfed by the long sleeve. “Okay, this?” She points at the clothes. “Best thing to happen to me all day, seriously.”

_Best thing to happen to me all decade, but who’s keeping track?_

“You’re welcome. You came all the way here, it’s the least I could do,” he says, forcing himself to walk in instead of staring at her from the door still like a creep. It’s only when he stops by the piano that he realizes he’s smiling. Not too widely — he’s not sure the muscles in his jaw still remember how to fully do it — but it’s still there, and it's been happening way too often recently.

She scooches on the bench and pats the seat in an invitation. “I interrupted your playing, didn’t I? You should continue.”

Sitting next to her, Ben suddenly finds the word a quiet part of him has been looking for over the past few days. A word that eluded him every time he tried to look directly at it, leaving behind that annoying feeling of a concept dancing at the tip of his tongue, but unwilling to come out and play. The closest he came to it is 'want', but it's too limited, narrow, doesn't begin to cover the inquietude that's assaulted him lately.

He finds it now, in the touch of her knee against his thigh and the dimples tucked into her smile: he longs. 

For what, exactly, is another discovery waiting to be made; the only thing he knows right now is that he longs for a lot, has been longing his whole life. And the hazy notion that, perhaps, he won't have to anymore pokes him from a distance.

He poises his hands over the keys. “Any requests?” he asks, mockingly solemn.

With a finger on her lips, Rey gives that some thought. “Hmm… I don’t know, what do you feel like playing?”

“Well, I did get to know a lot of new songs this last week, so my repertoire’s expanded a little.” He hits the first notes of a new favorite before he’s even finished that sentence, and it doesn’t take too long for him to hear a low “oh” of recognition from Rey, and feel her move beside him as she dances in place. It is, after all, ‘a banger.’

And while he doesn’t know the lyrics to this one either, it’s not a problem: Rey immediately belts out the words.

 _I was just an only child of the universe_ _  
__And then I found you, and then I found you_  
 _You are the sun and I am just the planets_ _  
_Spinning around you, spinning around you

Rey singing is a distraction Ben did not at all foresee, and he bites his lips not to laugh: she’s horrible. Absolutely _terrible._ She reminds him of the time his parents took him to the zoo, and he jumped a whole foot into the air as he discovered exactly what a peacock _sounds_ like. He still wishes he hadn’t, it’s nightmare fuel — not unlike Rey’s singing.

If asked, he’d say his own singing abilities are comfortably lodged somewhere between ‘passable’ and ‘mediocre,’ but he would sound like Idina Menzel next to this wailing cat by his side; when she tries to hit the high note in the line _You were too good to be true,_ Ben thinks his right ear is going to bleed.

How a musician, and an excellent one at that, can be that incapable of carrying a tune is an enigma, but he can’t be bothered to care; she sings with such enthusiasm, going as painfully high or as comically low as the melody demands, and with such an exuberant smile on her face that it becomes contagious, and he finds himself humming along before he realizes it.

By the time the song’s over, she’s never looked so happy or more dazzling. 

“This was great! I can’t believe you already know how to play it!”

He shrugs. “It wasn’t hard.”

“I can’t believe you let me sing, either,” she says, smile turning mischievous. Oh, she’s _fully_ aware of how bad she is, isn’t she?

“Yeah, _that_ was hard,” he mumbles, and gets an elbow on his ribs for it. “Ow!”

“I came out to talk about music, and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now,” she says, looking about as offended as he sounded injured with his little ‘ow,’ and he grins at her.

“Are you, now? Well, I hope you came to talk about _your_ music, because it’s fantastic.”

Rey stills so completely that Ben worries he’s somehow managed to say the wrong thing again. She stares at him, her face unreadable, and the whole conversation is suspended for long seconds before she finally asks, “You really mean that?”

“What do you mean, ‘you really mean that’?” he asks, baffled. “What do you think I was playing until 4:30 in the morning?”

She clamps her hands over her mouth. “You were playing ‘Sunset’?” she half-whispers.

“Rey, come on,” is all he says before standing up. He gestures for her to get up as well, and lifts the bench seat; from the storage space inside, he takes the sheet music he hastily improvised in the early hours of the morning. He’d only listened to “Sunset” a few times on loop before realizing he wanted to do more than listen to it: he needed to play it. 

She takes the sheet with held breath and stunned eyes.

“Ben, you—” she says, her voice down to a murmur. She straightens up, looks into his eyes and starts again in a firmer voice. “Ben, I came to tell you that I know what I want to do.”

“Regarding…?”

“My music. Listen.” She sits back down, this time with her legs astride like on a horse, and he follows suit, fully facing her.

“People like my covers, right? Those are good. But I only make, like, ten bucks a night because the only ones listening are the people walking by — but what if it was a YouTube channel?”

“A YouTube channel…” Ben repeats slowly. Huh. An unconventional approach to music, to be sure— actually, no, not really, right? It would’ve been unconventional ten years ago, maybe, but how many new artists haven’t been discovered because of YouTube? He’s 79% sure that’s what happened to Justin Bieber, and wasn’t that what happened to the “Call Me Maybe” person? (God, if it were possible to physically choke Hux’s musical taste.) That a capella group too, Penta...sonic? Pentatonic. Yeah, Pentatonic, that sounds right.

As he nods, processing the idea, Rey goes on more enthusiastically. “I could do basically the same thing, just on video instead of on the street, and… I don’t know, with a decent background.”

“You’d need a place with the appropriate acoustics,” Ben points out.

“I have one, actually! My friend Poe has this really nice small studio at home, we all get together to play there sometimes, and I’m pretty sure I could use it. And _then,_ if I can get good viewership with my covers, I can start throwing my own music in there!”

Ben looks at her. That’s… not a bad idea at all. _“N_ _o one wants to hear original music from a nobody.”_ While he’s of the strong opinion that the general public is made up entirely of morons who can’t recognize good music even when it slaps them across the face, she does have a point. People will rarely listen to new music unless it’s got a famous name attached to it. But if she had subscribers, wouldn’t they also end up listening to her original compositions?

“And _your_ music is something that you can actually sell,” he concludes.

She slaps him on the arm with way more force than he would’ve deemed necessary. “Exactly! I can have my own stuff on Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, and so on!”

“And you would use your friend’s studio to record?”

“Yes! But also…” she trails off, shifting on the seat. Ben waits for her to finish, but all she does for the next few seconds is pull at the sleeves of the hoodie, making tiny crumpled balls with the fabric at the cuff.

 _She’s embarrassed,_ he realizes with dawning shock. The last person he would ever associate with embarrassment is Rey, whose every step and move carries all the self-assurance he’s never managed to grasp.

“I was thinking…” She fiddles with the sleeves, flapping one against the other like some sort of percussion to her words, “I just… I think this piece— and others, too, because I have others! I don’t have just this one, but I haven’t recorded the others, so…”

“Rey,” he says calmly. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

She takes a deep breath, and blurts it out. “I really wanted my pieces to have accompaniment. Piano accompaniment. And I was wondering if you w—”

“Yes.”

She pauses.

“You’re willing to play wi—”

“Yes.”

Ben leans back on his hands, trying his best not to look amused at her confusion, but that’s probably a lost battle.

“I mean…” she tries, practically squirming on the seat, “you don’t have to answer right now, you can think about it.”

“I know. But the answer is gonna be the same tomorrow, or next week, so what’s the point?”

This time, the smile he was looking for comes out — slow, but certain and radiant like sunrise.

“You really want to play with me?” she asks.

Ben feels a sigh climbing up his throat. How is she even surprised, is his poker face that good? It can’t be. Surely it’s written on his face by now that he would play the fucking theremin if she asked him to.

He pushes the sigh back, but a small snort still comes out.

“Yes, Rey, I really want to play with you.”

And just like that, the smile turns into the very embodiment of disappointment, and she throws her head back, groaning. Taken by surprise, he almost asks her _‘what did I do now?’_ before she laments:

“I can’t believe I don’t have my violin here.”

“Oh,” he exhales, relieved, and gets up. “That’s easy enough, hold on.”

After a quick trip to the storage on the second floor, Ben comes back with a violin case. At the sight of it Rey snaps into attention so immediately that Ben finds himself tempted to say “at ease”.

“Ben, what are you—”

“Don’t worry,” he hurries to clarify, “the store is gonna return it. The case got damaged during transport, so we can’t actually sell it. They’re supposed to be a whole package. But the violin, as you can see,” he adds, opening the case with what has to be the very first flourish of his entire life, “is in perfect condition.”

The strangled sound that comes from Rey’s throat when she sees the instrument is worth ten times the price of the actual thing, at the very least. And it’s only the thought of having to justify to Phasma the disappearance of a Cremona SV-500 that keeps him from straight up giving it to Rey. (Hux would also be extremely annoying with his “What are we going to tell Snoke?!” but Snoke can go fuck himself, for all Ben cares.)

Rey takes the Cremona with a reverence Ben’s never seen anyone touch any instrument ever (with the possible exception of his father and the grand piano in their old music room).

_“Do you and the piano need a minute, Han?”_

_He winked. “Why don’t you bring your violin in here so we can have some mènage à quatre, sweetheart?”_

_“Your French is horrible,” said Ben, leaving the room as fast as his legs would carry him. His parents were so gross sometimes._

“This is leagues better than mine, oh my god,” Rey whispers.

“My thoughts exactly,” Ben replies, which earns him a glare that Medusa herself would be proud of.

“I’m choosing to ignore _that_ comment. But really, are you sure I can play this?” she asks, caressing the violin. Ben has never once wished he were an inanimate object, but there’s a first time for everything.

“Absolutely. Someone should, really.”

They spend the next few minutes tuning the violin — or rather, Rey does it, while he refrains from telling her how to do it. Not that she needs to be told, she’s clearly got loads of practice and an excellent ear. But old habits die hard, and between noticing Rey’s collapsed wrist, and watching her tune the violin now, his training keeps rising from the tomb with the incessant clacking of old, long-buried bones that taunt him and ask him to dance, like some sort of _Danse Macabre_ ironically come to life.

To distract himself, he opens the food delivery app on his phone with a “You eat pizza, right?”

“Yes, but only because I can’t inhale it.”

“That’s… mildly concerning.”

After he orders something with so much pepperoni on it that he can already hear their arteries exploding, they look at each other. She stands up, gets into position — and then realizes she won’t be able to play anything unless she rolls up the too-long sleeves.

“Oh crap,” she mutters, laying the violin down on top of the piano and beginning the laborious process of rolling up the sleeves with one hand. All she accomplishes is for one sleeve to come down when she manages the other.

Before he knows what he’s doing, Ben grabs a bit of the hoodie where it pools around her waist and pulls her towards him. She comes as effortlessly as a dandelion seed, and the hitch in her breath when she does goes straight to the pit of his stomach; God, she’s so light. It’d be so easy to carry her, or hold her up against a wall. If she wanted. He’s not sure of what she wants, only that whatever it is, he’ll give it to her.

“Give me your arm,” he says softly. She stretches one without a word, and he methodically folds the sleeve over and over again until it reaches her elbow, overly aware of how this is only the second time he’s touched her in any way. With that in mind, he takes his time with the second arm, enjoying each time his fingers lightly brush against her warm skin, and wondering what her arms would feel like wrapped around his neck. What it’d be like to really touch her, to slide his hands down her back and settle them on the small of it before letting them wander again, to map every line and every curve until the only thing she still remembered was his name. What she’d look like wearing nothing but his hoodie, and if he’d ever find out.

He gives her folded sleeve a final pull to adjust it and abruptly lets her arm fall, before he gets too lost in it. She lets out a slow breath, mirroring his own.

“Let’s?” she says, her voice coming out close to a hush.

He clears his throat. “Let’s,” he replies, turning around on the bench and propping up the sheet on the rack. “In A minor, right? So I’m gonna start like… ba ba, ba, ba da da… yeah?” he says, trying the notes on the piano.

“Brilliant, that’s it. I’m gonna come in…” She scans the sheet to find it, and taps the passage lightly, “here. Yeah? Okay.” She takes a deep breath, and he can practically _see_ the excitement thrumming under her skin. “Ready?”

“Let’s do this.” He rubs his hands on his jeans, and places them on the keyboard. “Two, three, four.”

[It’s a slow start for him](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLdX6TA4CK4&list=PLug8X6HU-Cz1vunOvkgje4FTp4rizD0SF&index=9&t=0s), with his eyes constantly going back to the sheet, afraid he’s playing it wrong; playing a new piece half a dozen times after three in the morning, running on his last fumes before going to bed, can hardly have helped.

His main concern had been to try and capture the essence of the piece, its pensiveness, loneliness, its — there’s that word again — longing. And he’d gone to bed almost despairing of ever being able to do it. But now, as soon as Rey’s violin comes in, as poignant as the first time he heard it, the melody flows easily and wistfully like a stream.

It’s all there, the current of sorrow intertwined with hope hanging at the edge of every note, the vivid impression of time standing still as it passes inexorably by, and every little shard that etched in him the belief that this is a piece about waiting.

Waiting for who or what, he can’t say, but he knows he’s right; the notes tell a story of years wasted on waiting, and echoes a life in suspension.

He would know.

The melody builds and rises and surges, floods the room and all the negative space between them until it crests and falls, dying with the last chord and receding from the shore.

In the ensuing silence, Ben lets his hands fall from the keyboard, absent-mindedly rubbing them on his thighs as he stares at the piano in silence. That was… good. _Really_ good, actually. Rough around the edges, of course, but nothing that rehearsing won’t take care of. It sounded… right.

He turns on the bench to say that, but freezes when he meets Rey’s eyes trained on him — and it’s honestly outrageous that she looks this pretty when she’s gaping like a fish. She makes the most ridiculous faces, and all it does is make him want to kiss her senseless.

“Is it me, or did it sound amazing?” she asks, and shakes her head. “I mean, yeah, it’s not perfect, but that’s just a matter of rehearsing, right? This sounded… good. Really good.”

He stares at her for a beat, before quietly shutting the fallboard with a chuckle; with one elbow on it, he leans his head on one hand and looks at her, feeling that pesky smile coming out again.

“What?”

“Don’t remember giving you permission to go into my head like that,” he says without thinking, which has to be the worst of his habits.

Here, however, he’s rewarded for it: she ducks her head, trying to hide a smile behind a curtain of hair. Ben can’t think of anything less worth hiding, and he watches it with the faint pride of being the one who made it happen; her smiles happen more often than the sun rises and sets, but it’s one thing to watch it happen, and another to be its sole cause, and he basks in the sensation. What would it be like to make it happen every day? To be able to drink from it every morning?

Avoiding eye contact and failing to stop smiling, Rey takes the sheet music from the rack and scrutinizes it. For a fleeting moment, Ben wonders if he screwed up the notation somehow, but he abandons that notion as quickly as it comes. He hasn’t screwed up music notations since he was a child, the idea is absurd. Rey cocks her head, eyes glazing over the notes on the paper and she gets lost in thought. He waits.

“Do you have a pen?” she asks suddenly. “Or a pencil?”

“Um, there are some behind the counter, I can—” He makes to stand up, but Rey gives him the violin to hold and dashes out of the room, leaving a stunned Ben behind.

Fuck, he _did_ screw up the notations, didn’t he? How’s that even possible? It’s never happened to him in well over two decades! Oh well. He was tired, it’d been a long day… it happens to anyone. It’s no big deal, he tells himself.

She comes back with a pencil and a triumphant smile. “Got it! Okay,” she says, sitting next to him and grabbing the sheet music again. She eyes it critically. “You’ve got such pretty handwriting, by the way. It’d be a shame if someone were to ruin what you wrote, but I _really_ have to.” She scribbles something on the sheet, and Ben looks over her shoulder to see where his mistake had b— oh.

At the top of the page, where he’d carefully written the title “Sunset”, Rey’s added another word.

“You’re changing the name?” he asks.

She shrugs, and it’s the most insincere shrug Ben’s ever seen, an awkward attempt at nonchalance that Rey, with all of her bright enthusiasm, is not made to pull off.

“I thought it made sense? I mean…” She trails off, her fingers delicately sliding along the piano keys; Ben’s eyes follow the movement, while he debates whether he should tell her that whatever’s going through her head right now is not nearly as stupid she seems to think it is.

“I named it that because that was the only time of the day I had to play. I had just… I’d just gotten here, I didn’t know anybody, I was juggling two horrible jobs, living in a rented room, and I _hated_ it. I hated every second of it. I wanted to get out, to _do_ stuff, make things happen. But it was just me, playing in a small room and wishing I was somewhere else. But...” She gestures vaguely at him and the piano, probably hoping the motion would convey the rest of her meaning.

“But now it’s not just you anymore,” he says, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he can even think about smothering them.

She looks up at him. “Yeah.” The feigned casualness she’s dressed herself with is gone, replaced with certainty. “And it’s not just you, either. Now,” she adds, gently taking the violin back from his hands, “you have accompaniment too.”

That actually takes him by surprise. The only way he’s thought of this so far is of himself as _her_ accompaniment; someone to be the basis to make sure she could take flight. It didn’t occur to him that he was also getting his own accompaniment.

Maybe that’s what a duo really is, after all.

“Hmm. I do, don’t I?” he says, feeling his own smile come unbidden — and for once, he lets it. Might as well. “So. Wanna go again?” _Another round of our mènage à quatre?,_ he doesn’t say.

“Read my mind,” she answers, jumping off the bench again (and nearly tripping on the hem of the pants that are too long for her). He wonders if she’s even capable of playing while sitting down; if the barely contained energy with which she usually moves when she plays is anything to go by, then he already knows how futile that question is. 

As she takes position, Ben looks at the sheet music once again, his eyes landing on the word Rey scribbled next to his own handwriting. Good God, she writes like a savage. It should set his teeth on edge, but all it really does is make him wonder what he has to do, what note he has to play, that will make her stay. That will make her want him around.

 _“You have accompaniment too”_ echoes in his ear, solid and clear. She even went so far as to write it on paper, crafting a title that says what neither of them did. _Now there’s two of us._

As his fingers find the first notes on the keyboard with ease, he takes one last look at those two words on top.

“Binary Sunset.” That’s a good name.

♪♫♬

The only light left on in the store is the one immediately above the grand piano and Ben, who is now the sole occupant of the room. It’s not that uncommon an occurrence, he practices here until late most days — what _is_ off the beaten path, both for him and the room, is the couple of empty pizza boxes piled up in a corner alongside the roll of paper towels Ben brought from his own kitchen, an empty bottle of Coke and two glasses. These are common staples of his nights, but never in pairs; everything in his life is made of solo items (the irony of which doesn’t escape him).

The double numbers are the only indicator that there was ever another person in this room, sharing her music, her hopes, and a piece of the night. And if he can’t remember the last time that happened to him, it’s because it never had.

Then again, most of him feels like it had never happened before Rey waltzed into his life.

The other unusual detail in the room is the pencil and paper by his side on the bench. He hasn’t needed those in, what, a decade? Longer, probably. Much longer.

Fifteen years, to be exact.

It’s been fifteen years since he left behind the pile of sheet music stashed in the drawers of his old writing desk — piano sonatas, waltzes, nocturnes, concertos for violin — and tried to forget about them as best as he could. There was no use in trying to remember music composed by a Ben Solo that no longer existed, and nothing or no one to compose new music for.

Until now.

Now all he can hear is her: [a handful of notes in A minor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDc9W7PUIEg&list=PLug8X6HU-Cz1vunOvkgje4FTp4rizD0SF&index=7). Notes that are playful to an inattentive ear, but under which lie something more thoughtful; lonely. Something that will break before it bends.

Something that needs much more than a piano. He can hear the strings and horns; there should also be flutes as it ascends and — yes, this move into D minor needs a full wave of strings. How else would she soar?

His fingers fly across the keys with the certainty of a song he knows by heart, and he only stops here and there to jot it down on paper. By the time he’s done, and somewhat satisfied with the five pages of music in his hands, the screen on his phone shows it’s a little past three in the morning.

Ben looks at the first page, considering. Titles should always come in the end, after you know what the piece is about. And even then, sometimes you end up with something like “Voices of Spring,” and sometimes you end up with the obvious, like “Symphony No. 5.”

Well, if there’s one thing he knows, is what the piece is about; and so, feeling a tad on the side of ‘this is stupid,’ and a bit on the side of ‘it is what it is,’ he carefully writes the title in cursive at the top of the page.

_Rey_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! ^^ Just a quick note: I wanted to post this 2 weeks ago, but given that was exactly when the BLM protests started, it didn't feel right at the time. "Yes, I'm aware of police brutality and the dangers black people have to live through every day, but here's some white people nonsense." *slides fic update across the table*  
> The fight's still going on, and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise!, but fandoms have somewhat resumed their normal activity, so here I am with these two dorks and their white people nonsense XD
> 
> For those wondering: [this is a theremin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYSGTkNtazo). Yes, it is very interesting and quite absurd, I agree.
> 
> ALSO: [this is what peacocks sound like](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MhZPqHeEAQ). Yeah, I know, me too. Me. Too.
> 
> On a better topic, music-wise: The [Danse Macabre, Op.40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyknBTm_YyM) is a symphonic poem by Camille Saint-Saëns about death and its fiddle luring the dead from their graves to dance for him. It's one of my favorite pieces of music, but also one classically trained emo violinist Ben Solo would absolutely know like the back of his hand.
> 
> [Playlist updated!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1RqwR4RUvHeQTaysBcN6S7) Not much to add this time around, I'm afraid, but more additions will come in the future!
> 
> An important note: this is a universe where there is, unfortunately, no Lindsey Stirling, no David Garrett, no one doing what Rey's thinking of. Let's say that she is the Lindsey Stirling in this universe XD (minus the dancing). 
> 
> And last, but not least: I know it's Pentatonix. Ben doesn't XD.
> 
> Thank you to my gorgeous betas [Rae](https://twitter.com/regardingluv) and [Aes](https://twitter.com/aeslis), both of whom are amazing. ♥
> 
> Come find me on [Tumblr](http://thehobbem.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thehobbem), where it's a lot of reylo and Adam Driver, no drama, and, well, a bit of the current topics, because how can I not? Which reminds me: happy pride month, everyone! Please stay safe, because it's dangerous out there for so many of us, but the world would definitely be a much worse place without you in it, I _assure_ you. ♥♥♥


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